'LIBRARY 

• 

iRNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


t4  S 


Long  Beach 
1, 


I.   PUVIS  DE  CHAVANNES. 


PUVIS   DE 
CHAVANNES 

With  a  Biographical  &  Critical  Study 
By  ANDRE  MICHEL,  Cura- 
tor of  the  National  Museums, 
Professor  at  the  Ecole  du 
Louvre;  and  Notes  by 
J.  LARAN  •  With 
Forty -Eight 
Plates 


LONDON -WILLIAM  HEINEMANN-1912 


Copyright  1912. 


CONTENTS 

Page 

Puvis  de  Chavannes.  Introduction  by  vii 

Andre  Michel 
Bibliographical  Note  xvi 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

1.  Portrait  of  the  artist  Frontispiece 

2.  Pieta  to  face  page  2 

3.  Les  Pompiers  de  Village  (Village  Firemen)  4 

4.  Le  Retour  de  Chasse  (The  Return  from  the  Chase)  6 

5.  Concordia  8 

6.  Bellum  10 

7.  Le  Travail  (Work)  12 

8.  Le  Repos  (Rest)  14 

9.  Dessin  pour  le  Repos  (A  Drawing  for  Le  Repos)  16 

10.  L'Automne  (Autumn)  18 

11.  A  la  Fontaine  (At  the  Well)  20 

12.  Ave  Picardia  Nutrix  (The  River)  22 

13.  Ave  Picardia  Nutrix  (The  Apple  Gathering)  24 

14.  Ave  Picardia  Nutrix  (Drawing  for  the  Spinner)  26 

15.  Le  Sommeil  (Sleep)  28 

1 6.  Marseille,  Porte  de  1'Orient  (Marseilles,  Gate 

of  the  East)  30 

17.  Saint  Jean-Baptiste  (Saint  John  the  Baptist)  32 

18.  Les  Jeunes  Filles  et  la  Mort  (Girls  and  Death)  34 

19.  L'Esperance  (Hope)  36 

20.  Charles  Martel  38 

21.  Rencontre  de  Sainte   Genevieve   et   de   Saint 

Germain  (The  Meeting  of  Saint  Genevieve 

and  Saint  Germain)  40 


22.  Sainte   Genevieve  et  Saint  Germain  (Central 

Panel)  to  face  page  42 

23.  Sainte  Genevieve  et  Saint  Germain  (Left  Panel)  44 

24.  La  Grande  Sceur  (The  Elder  Sister)  46 

25.  L'Enfance  de  Sainte  Genevieve  (The  Childhood 

of  Saint  Genevieve)  48 

26.  Jeunes  Filles  au  Bord  de  la  Mer  (Girls  by  the 

Sea  Shore)  50 

27.  L'Enfant  Prodigue  (The  Prodigal  Son)  52 

28.  Le  Pauvre  Pecheur  (The  Poor  Fisherman)  54 

29.  Jeunes  Picards  s'exer?ant  a  la  Lance  (Young 

Picardians  practising  the  Javelin)  56 

30.  Ludus  pro  Patria  58 

31.  Doux  Pays  (Land  of  Tenderness)  60 

32.  Le  Reve  (The  Dream)  62 

33.  Orph6e  (Orpheus)  64 

34.  Marie  Cantacuzene  66 

35.  Le  Bois  Sacre  (The  Holy  Wood)  68 

36.  Vision  Antique  (A  Vision  of  Ancient  Days)  70 

37.  Inspiration  Chretienne  (Christian  Inspiration)  72 

38.  Le  Rhone  et  la  Saone  74 

39.  La  Sorbonne  76 

40.  La  Sorbonne  (The  Sciences)  78 

41.  Inter  Artes  et  Naturam  80 

42.  La  Normandie  82 

43.  La  Gardeuse  de  Chevres  (The  Goatherd)  84 

44.  Le  Modele  (Pastel)  86 

45.  L'Et6  (Summer)  88 

46.  L'Hiver  (Winter)  90 

47.  Les  Muses  Inspiratrices  (The  Inspiring  Muses)  92 

48.  La  Veillee  de  Sainte  Genevieve  (The  Vigil  of 

Saint  Genevieve)  94 


I 


PIERRE  PUVIS  DE  CHAVANNES 

(1824—1898) 

HE  portrait  reproduced  in  the  first  plate  in 
this  little  volume  might  well  be  taken  as  the 
most  direct  comment  upon  it;  it  is  the  most 
natural  introduction.  Here,  depicted  exactly 
as  he  was  to  us  who  knew  and  loved  him  in  the  portrait 
painted  "  da  Medesimo  "  for  the  Uffizi  Gallery,  is  the 
creator  of  so  many  great  pictures  which,  much  reduced 
though  still  recognizable  and  compelling,  are  here 
considered.  It  was  those  clear,  steady  eyes  that  saw 
the  satisfying  and  luminously  lovely  visions  that  restored 
French  art  to  the  empire  of  idealism,  which  was  even 
more  compromised  by  the  writings  of  some  of  its 
champions  than  by  the  most  furious  onslaughts  of  those 
who  most  fervently  denied  it ;  it  was  in  the  mind  behind 
the  pure  lofty  brow,  in  the  sound  uncontaminated  will, 
the  calmly  creative  brain  that  was  even  mistress  of  itself 
that  they  slowly  took  shape.  There  is  nothing  in  his  dress, 
his  attitude  or  the  setting  of  the  portrait  to  betray  the 
"  artist  "  and  the  "  painter."  His  bearing  is  that  of  a 
correct  and  rather  "  distant  "  gentleman,  erect,  supple 
and  slim  in  his  tight-fitting  frock-coat,  with  the  significant 
stiffness  of  the  shoulders  that  he  often  gave  to  his  ideal 
figures;  there  is  nothing,  not  a  single  detail  to  "  localize  " 
the  portrait  in  which  every  feature  is  strongly  marked 
(particularly  the  nose  which  Puvis  de  Chavannes  himself 
called  "  colossal  "  when  he  sent  me  his  photograph  for 
the  "  Revue  d'art  Viennoise  ")  and  yet  even  in  the  close- 
ness and  preciseness  of  the  individual  resemblance  the 
master's  generalizing  temper  of  mind  is  clearly  to  be  seen. 
The  whole  man  is  in  the  portrait. 

vii 


It  was  painted  in  1887.  He  was  sixty-three;  he  was  work- 
ing on  the  Sorbonne  cartoon;  he  was  at  the  very  height 
of  his  career,  in  full  possession  of  his  genius ;  he  could  with 
confident  serenity  look  back,  and  from  the  threshold  of  his 
old  age  consider  the  imposing  series  of  his  pictures,  which 
had  for  so  long  been  misunderstood,  though  henceforth 
they  were  to  be  universally  acclaimed.  I  may  be  permitted 
perhaps  to  go  back  in  memory  and  to  state  that  it  was 
not  until  that  time,  to  be  exact,  at  the  beginning  of  1888, 
that  I  made  his  acquaintance.  Before  that,  beginning 
with  May  8,  1881,  when  he  wrote  me  a  few  lines  in  his 
admirable  handwriting  (as  beautiful  as  that  of  Racine 
and  Jose- Maria  de  Heredia)  thanking  me  for  an  article 
I  wrote  in  "  Le  Parlement  "  on  "  Le  Pauvre  Pecheur," 
I  had  received  many  previous  tokens  of  his  gratitude 
after  various  battles  waged  in  defence  of  his  art;  but  we 
had  never  met.  After  a  correspondence  of  several  years 
he  wrote  to  me:  "  .    .    .   after  such  energetically  ex- 
pressed appreciation  as  yours  I  would  much  have  liked 
to  know  you  personally  and  I  have  more  than  once  felt 
an  impulse  to  contrive  it ;  but,  not  to  speak  of  my  dread 
of  trespassing  on  your  kindness,  I  am  also  conscious  of 
a  rare  delicacy  in  such  relationships  in  which  an  artistic 
sympathy  is  enough  to  set  up  a  current,  which  on  my 
side  at  any  rate,  I  feel  to  be  very  near  affection.    ..." 
It  was  left  for  Cazin  to  introduce  us  at  a  monthly  dinner 
presided  over  by  Puvis  de  Chavannes  (and  christened,  I 
believe,  by  Jean  Beraud,  with  a  compromising  play  on 
words,  in  no  wise  justified  by  the  sobriety  of  the  guests 
or  the  bill  of  fare,  the  "  rum-dinner  "  (pris  de  rhum 
because  there  was  not  a  single  Prix  de  Rome  among  the 
members !)  and  so  to  establish  a  personal  relation  between 
viii 


the  then  illustrious  master  and  the  humble  writer  on  art, 
who,  from  his  earliest  years,  had  had  the  most  fervent 
admiration  for  him.  We  were  already  friends — if 
such  a  word  can  properly  be  used  to  describe  a  relation- 
ship between  men  of  such  unequal  ages  and  quality — 
when  we  met. 

One  needs  to  have  participated  in  those  jovial  gatherings 
in  which  for  several  years  painters,  sculptors,  musicians, 
and  men  of  letters  met  every  month  under  his  chairman- 
ship— one  needs  to  have  seen  him  in  his  genial  good 
humour  and  good  fellowship,  tempered  always  with  his 
sound  common  sense,  to  understand  how  he  has  been 
caricatured  in  the  pen-portraits  of  the  long-haired 
aesthetes  and  neo-mystics,  the  scullions  let  loose  from  the 
kitchens  of  Montsalvat,  which  appeared  during  the  last 
years  of  his  life.  .  .  .  Without  attempting  any  analysis  of 
his  work,  which  will  be  amply  set  before  the  reader  in 
M.  Jean  Laran's  notes,  I  would  like  to  show  in  a  few 
words  how  his  work  really  belongs  to  the  greatest  French 
traditions,  how,  logically,  it  came  at  its  appointed  hour, 
and  how  we  Frenchmen  found  in  it  and  championed  our 
"  Ideal  "  against  the  stifling  formulae  of  the  academies, 
and  the  naturalists  who  denied  it,  and  the  perverts  and 
charlatans  who  profaned  it. 

The  mere  mention  of  the  word  Ideal  seems  to  upset 
certain  minds.  It  has  been  so  horribly  abused  aestheti- 
cally, it  has  been  burdened  with  meanings  so  widely 
diverse  in  the  jargon  of  the  schools,  that  it  can  only  be 
used  with  extreme  caution.  As  a  matter  of  fact  all  art, 
by  its  very  existence,  is  ideal,  since  it  can  only  exist  by 
the  intervention  of  man  following  a  directing  and 
organizing  idea.  The  simplest  still-life  study  may  contain 

ix 


as  much  and  more  spiritual  essence  than  the  most  com- 
plicated allegory;  a  painter's  most  delicate  shades  of 
sensibility  can  be  revealed  in  it,  and  as  between  one  man 
and  another,  the  personal  equation,  to  adopt  the  language 
of  the  astronomers,  is  subject  to  incessant  modification, 
every  piece  of  nature  reflected  in  different  eyes  and  minds 
will  take  on  a  new  aspect,  and  reflect  an  intimacy, 
an  ideal,  which  must  be  renewed  at  every  attempt. 
The  higher  and  more  complicated  the  nature  of  the 
subject,  the  greater  becomes  the  number  of  possible 
styles  and  variations,  and,  through  portraiture  and 
historical  painting,  we  come  to  great  decorative  paint- 
ing in  which  desire  and  will  become  more  conscious  and 
more  imperiously  demand  the  expression  through  the 
object,  form  or  theme  represented,  something  beyond 
them,  an  inward  "  motive,"  an  idea,  a  superior 
harmony — and  that  is  the  very  region  of  idealism,  in  its 
more  special  meaning,  though  it  must  always  be  condi- 
tioned by  the  nature  and  demands  of  the  language  of 
paint,  to  which  one  might  apply  the  saying  of  Newton: 
"  Let  Physics  beware  of  Metaphysics." 
When  Puvis  de  Chavannes  appeared  on  the  scene, 
people  were  still  wrangling  about  the  ideal,  meaning 
the  scholastic  ideal,  as  it  had  been  defined,  following 
Quatremere  de  Quincy,  by  the  academic  aesthetics. 
The  Beautiful,  with  a  capital  B,  "  Absolute  Beauty," 
"  Sovereign  Beauty," — those  were  the  words  written 
by  Eugene  Delacroix,  the  conscientious,  though  some- 
times astonished,  pupil  of  Gu6rin,  in  one  of  his  note- 
books, one  day  when  he  had  been  made  to  "  reconcile  a 
negro's  face  with  the  profile  of  Antinoiis  "  and  the  same 
model's  Luce  with  the  "palette  of  the  Atrides";  as 
x 


Raffet  said:  "  The  ugly,  absolute  ugliness,  these  are  our 
conventions  .  .  .  these  are  our  fancy  heads  and  fancy 
wrinkles.  ..."  Between  the  classics  grouped  round 
Ingres  in  his  old  age,  whom  they  set  up  on  a  pedestal 
without  in  the  least  understanding  him,  and  the  last  of 
the  romantics,  old,  discouraged,  decimated — amongst 
whomTh.  Couture,  a  skilful  though  ponderous  craftsman, 
full  of  precepts  and  prescriptions  for  good  painting,  most 
of  them  picked  up  from  Decamps,  tried  to  codify  his 
confused  and  blundering  experiments,  a  new  generation, 
a  new  school  (or  mob)  had  arisen,  who  were  equally 
violent  in  their  opposition  to  their  old  and  their  new 
adversaries.  These  were  the  realists  who  followed 
Courbet  in  saying:  "  If  you  want  me  to  paint  goddesses, 
show  me  some!  "  But  above  all — outside  the  doctrinaries 
of  every  party,  as  a  logical  and  wholesome  consequence 
of  their  naive  intimacy  with  unspoiled  nature — the 
landscape  painters  were  beginning  to  exercise  a  decisive 
influence  on  modern  painting.  The  artist's  vision, 
falsified  by  so  many  theories,  prejudices  and  formulae 
was  being  classified,  stripped,  illuminated;  artists  were 
beginning  to  understand  that  the  bituminous  back- 
grounds of  the  one  party,  or  the  tubes  of  starch  of  the 
other  were  not  indispensable  to  the  art  of  painting,  to  the 
emotions,  or  to  the  ideal.  "  The  innocent  clear  light  of 
day  "  by  its  entry  into  the  art  of  painting,  dissipated 
many  phantoms.  .  .  .  When  we  consider  certain 
water-colours  like  the  "  Birth  of  the  Muses,"  or  certain 
sketches  for  the  "  Golden  Age,"  it  would  seem  that  even 
Ingres  himself  had  understood  this  or  had  a  presentiment 
of  it. 

After  a   period   of   hesitation   between   Delacroix  and 

xi 


Courbet,  Puvis,  no  doubt  following  Chass6riau,  found 
the  royal  road  along  which  his  genius  was  to  travel. 
Already  in  Couture's  studio,  where  he  worked  for  a  time, 
he  had  made  certain  instructive  experiments.  Although 
he  was  never  very  ready  to  talk  of  his  apprenticeship 
and  his  early  attempts,  he  told  me  that  one  day,  on  a 
grey  autumn  morning  while  he  was  painting  from  the 
model,  the  master,  coming  up  to  his  easel,  scolded  him 
for  his  anaemic  painting  and  began  to  tell  him  how  to 
get  the  flesh  tints,  which  he  seemed  to  be  ignoring 
altogether.  Though  he  had  not  yet  broken  away,  and  was 
not  yet  certain  of  what  he  was  doing,  Puvis  was  quite 
sure  that  he  had  no  use  for  the  prescription.  The  art  of 
making  sauces  is  no  doubt  very  valuable  and  is  not  to  be 
despised;  but  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he  had  something 
else  to  satisfy,  a  more  intimate  ideal  to  cherish. 
It  will  be  seen  how  he  began  to  become  conscious  of  it 
about  1859.  One  evening  when  I  was  speaking  about  his 
"  Retour  de  Chasse,"  which  I  had  just  seen  in  the  Mar- 
seilles museum  he  said  to  me — I  can  still  hear  him — 
"  Ah!  on  that  day  I  felt  that  I  was  going  to  have  water 
to  swim  in  all  around  mel  "  And  it  was  on  that  day  that 
the  real  Puvis  de  Chavannes  was  born. 
It  is  not  my  business  here  to  follow  the  development  of 
his  work,  the  growing  freedom  of  his  ideas,  the  founda- 
tion of  his  style,  since  the  reader  can  do  that  much  better 
for  himself  by  considering  the  pictures  here  reproduced. 
When  Ferdinand  Brunetiere  in  a  famous  lecture  con- 
gratulated the  painter  of  "  Ludus  pro  Patria  "  and  "  Inter 
Artes  et  Naturam  "  on  having  released  "  the  ideal  ele- 
ment in  painting  "  from  the  "  game  of  colours  "  I  do  not 
quite  understand,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  he  himself  was 
xii 


very  clear  as  to  what  he  meant — unless  he  was  trying 
to  say  that  in  proportion  as  he  became  more  clearly 
conscious  of  his  vocation,  and  could  more  definitely 
interpret  his  own  heart  and  mind,  Puvis  simplified, 
purified  and,  as  it  were,  spiritualized  his  painting.  Now 
his  mind  was  in  its  most  intimate  essence,  in  its  workings 
and  aspirations  absolutely  "  classical,"  completely 
mistress  of  form  and  composition  and  regular  rhythmic 
harmony,  organized  for  the  satisfaction  of  eyes  and 
mind — though  within  the  limitations  and  subject  to  the 
means  at  the  disposal  of  the  plastic  language  of  paint. 
Brunetiere  therefore  was  right  in  praising  Puvis  for 
having  resorted  "  more  even  than  to  modelling,  to 
inward  meditation  and  the  harmony  of  detail,  and  the 
idea  of  the  whole  composition,  the  poetic  significance  of 
his  subject."  But  perhaps  he  attached  a  rather  dangerous 
meaning  (from  the  painter's  point  of  view)  to  his  eloquent 
and  noble  eulogy,  when  he  added  that  Puvis  must  above 
all  be  praised  for  having  "  understood  that  the  imitation 
of  Nature  could  not  be  the  aim  and  end  of  painting,  and 
that,  as  Pascal  said,  if  we  are  to  admire  imitations 
of  things  which  in  themselves  we  do  not  admire,  the 
artist's  mind  must  have  found  in  it  something  hidden, 
intimate  and  ulterior  which  is  not  revealed  to  the  vulgar 
gaze." 

The  scullions  to  whom  I  alluded  above  twisted  Brune- 
tiere's  words  to  their  own  uses;  they  saw,  or  pretended 
to  see,  in  Puvis  a  great  initiate,  a  revealer  of  the  "  Sense 
of  Mystery,"  the  wonderful  mystery  of  which  they 
pretended  to  have  the  key,  though,  for  reasons  that  have 
never  been  explained,  like  the  turkey  in  the  fable,  they 
have  never  been  able  to  make  it  very  clear.  No,  Puvis 

xiii 


had  no  thought  of  disentangling  any  "  ulterior  "  or 
"  hidden  "  or  esoteric  meaning  from  Nature.  There  was 
in  his  art  no  incantation,  no  open  sesame  other  than 
penetration,  the  mastery  of  Nature  by  a  lofty  powerful 
mind,  sensitive  to  rhythm,  beauty,  force,  grandeur, 
eloquence,  recreating  for  the  uses  of  our  hearts  and 
minds,  amid  a  world  of  uncertainty  and  ruin,  a  world 
of  harmony.  Was  not  this  also  the  achievement,  in  his 
own  day  and  in  his  own  manner,  of  Nicolas  Poussin? 
Was  not  this  the  work  of  all  our  great  classics,  from  the 
builders  of  the  cathedrals  to  J.  B.  Corot?  "  Novelty  in 
painting,"  wrote  Poussin,  "  does  not  consist  in  the 
representation  of  an  entirely  new  subject,  but  in  the 
honest  and  new  handling  of  the  means  of  expression; 
a  subject  becomes  new  and  strange  where  before  it  was 
common  and  overlaid.  Invention  in  an  art  consists  of 
thinking  in  that  art ;  it  is  the  discovery  of  the  harmonies 
proper  to  that  art." 

Coming  at  a  time  when  classicism  had  fallen  into  dis- 
repute by  having  allowed  the  letter  to  take  precedence 
of  the  spirit  and  forgotten  the  way  to  the  eternal  source 
of  truth,  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  a  worthy  compatriot  of 
Bossuet  and  Buffon,  turned  to  account  what  the  land- 
scape painters  had  brought  into  French  art,  came  into 
touch  with  Nature,  whose  familiar  graces  and  sovereign 
rhythm  he  united  both  in  his  eclogues  and  his  epics,  and 
responded,  just  when  we  most  needed  it,  to  the  unex- 
pressed and  vague  expectations  of  all  those  who  were 
dreaming  of  great  destinies  for  our  natural  art,  and 
could  not  throw  in  their  lot  with  the  superficial  for- 
malism of  the  neo-classics  or  the  lateral  and  limited 
realism  of  the  "  copyists  "  of  "  slices  of  life."  He  re- 
xiv 


stored  the  imagination  of  the  French  to  the  straight, 
broad  road.  May  those  who  have  followed  his  example 
never  slumber  under  the  drowsy  syrup  of  dreams,  nor 
lose  themselves  in  a  maze  of  subtle  meanings:  but  may 
they  be  worthy  of  the  master  and,  without  repetition  of 
his  work,  contemplate  Nature,  and,  so  to  speak,  store 
her  up  in  their  minds,  and  seek  the  "  virtue  "  of  their  art 
in  the  profound  harmony  of  their  instincts,  their  hearts, 
and  their  will. 

ANDRE  MICHEL 


xv 


T 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE 

*•  •  ^HERE  has  not  yet  been  published  any  book 
8  dealing  fully  and  exhaustively  with  the  artist's 
life  and  work.  A  monograph  by  M.  L6once 
B6n6dite  is  in  course  of  preparation,  but  mean- 
while there  is  a  very  useful  little  study  by  M.  Marius 
Vachon  (Paris,  1895.  Illustrated;  new  and  revised  edition 
1900).  There  is  also  a  long  interview  written  by  M.  Thi6- 
bault  Sisson  in  "  Le  Temps,"  January  16,  1895,  an^ 
there  is  a  series  of  letters  recently  published,  with  notes 
by  M.  Conrad  de  Mandarin  and  M.  L.  Wehrl6  ("  Revue 
de  Paris,"  December  15,  1910,  and  February  i,  1911). 
We  have  had  the  advantage  of  certain  information 
hitherto  unpublished  kindly  supplied  by  M.  Paul  Bau- 
douin  and  M.  Victor  Koos. 


xvi 


PLATE  II.  PIETA 

p  •  -^  HE  artistic  career  of  Pierre  Puvis  de  Chavannes 
began  very  modestly  at  the  Salon  of  1850 — 
a  beginning  thoroughly  in  harmony  with  his 
•M.  "  perfectly  simple  "  life,  which  contained  so 
little  in  the  nature  of  marvellous  surprises  or  dramatic 
episodes.  "  Simple  "  was  the  painter's  own  expression, 
and  is  characteristic  of  the  sound  common  sense  which 
protected  him  from  his  too  zealous  admirers. 
He  was  comfortably  provided  for  by  his  family,  so  that 
he  was  able,  at  his  leisure,  to  follow  a  vocation  which 
came  late  in  life.  About  1847,  when  he  was  twenty- 
three,  he  was  working  in  Henri  Scheffer's  studio,  then 
in  Delacroix's,  and  then,  for  three  months,  in  Couture's. 
But  none  of  these  masters  could  tempt  him  to  become 
one  of  those  industrious  pupils  who  progress  steadily 
from  medals  to  prizes,  from  prizes  to  medals,  and  in  due 
course  attain  the  higher  ranks  of  their  profession.  He 
was  isolated  and  something  of  an  amateur  when,  at 
twenty-six,  he  sent  in  his  first  picture  to  the  Salon  of 
1850. 

The  picture  was  accepted;  and  it  is  hard  to  discern  in  it 
the  personality  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes.  His  dramatic 
sense  and  his  technique  are  still  under  the  influence  of 
Delacroix.  However,  it  was  not  by  chance  that  the  artist 
had  taken  a  serious  and  moving  subject,  and  was  less 
concerned  with  displaying  his  skill  as  a  painter  than  with 
evoking  a  strong  and  noble  emotion. 
There  was  no  affectation  about  his  ingenuousness,  and 
he  has  himself  told,  with  his  usual  geniality,  how  he 
was  forced  to  realize  his  want  of  experience  on  varnish- 
ing day.  "  With  a  fair  amount  of  success  I  had  painted 

B  I 


a  '  Pieta,' "  he  wrote  to  M.  Vachon.  "  The  Dead  Christ 
lying  on  the  knees  of  the  Virgin,  with  the  Magdalen 
kneeling  by  His  side.  I  was  delighted  at  having  it  ac- 
cepted, and  on  the  opening  day  I  went  very  early  in  the 
morning  to  see  myself  in  my  work.  When  I  stood  in 
front  of  it,  what  did  I  see?  Only  two  figures  instead  of 
three  1  I  was  amazed,  and  went  close  to  the  picture  and 
saw,  to  my  dismay,  that  my  purple-clad  virgin  was 
entirely  lost  in  the  background,  which  in  my  ignorance 
I  had  painted  violet.  .  .  .  From  that  moment  I  perceived 
the  value  of  tone  in  colour.  Only  from  that  day  on  was  I 
a  painter." 


II.   PIETA. 


I 


PLATE  III.  LES  POMPIERS  DE  VILLAGE  (VILLAGE 
FIREMEN) 

*    •    ^HE  years  following  this  first  success  were  not 
so  happy. 

By  way  of  consolation  for  his  successive  re- 
fusals at  the  Salon,  year  after  year,  he  had  to 
be  sure  the  example  of  almost  all  the  great  artists  of  his 
day — Delacroix,  Rousseau,  Millet,  Corot,  Dupre,  Barye, 
Troyon,  Courbet — all  of  whom  had  for  years  been 
rejected  by  the  jury,  and  were  even  at  that  time  occa- 
sionally refused,  in  spite  of  the  increasing  protests  of 
critics  and  connoisseurs.  But  in  spite  of  such  illustrious 
precedents  it  was  discouraging  to  be  excluded  from  the 
Salon  at  a  time  when  an  artist  had  hardly  any  oppor- 
tunity of  making  himself  known  outside  the  official 
exhibitions.  And  when  Courbet,  for  instance,  took  the 
initiative  and  in  1855  organized  a  private  exhibition  of 
his  work,  it  was  regarded  as  an  ambitious  challenge 
and  rather  bad  taste.  In  his  dilemma  Puvis  took  part 
in  a  private  exhibition  in  the  Bonne-Nouvelle  galleries 
about  this  time,  but  he  seems  only  to  have  met  with  a 
success  of  laughter. 

The  titles  of  the  pictures  disdained  by  the  jury  or  the 
public  at  this  time  clearly  demonstrate  the  young 
painter's  uncertainty,  for  he  is  here  wavering  between 
religious  art  and  historical  painting,  between  classical 
subjects  and  realistic  art.  Among  them  we  may  mention 
"  Mademoiselle  de  Sombreuil  buvant  un  verre  de  Sang 
pour  sauver  son  Pere  "  (1850,)  "  Jean  Cavalier  au  chevet 
de  sa  mere  mourante"  (Jean  Cavalier  at  his  mother's 
death-bed),  playing  the  choral  of  Luther  on  a  bass  fiddle, 
while  the  dying  woman,  with  a  Bible  on  her  bosom,  is 

B2  3 


gazing  at  the  sky  through  an  open  window  (1851),  an 
"  Ecce  Homo,"  now  in  the  church  at  Sampagnat 
(Saone  et  Loire)  (1852),  a  ''Martyrdom  of  Saint  Sebas- 
tian," "  Julia  "  returning  in  the  morning  to  the  house  of 
her  husband,  Agrippa,  a  "Meditation,"  a  "  Herodiad," 
and  finally  a  curious  picture  called  "  Les  Pompiers  de 
Village  "  (Village  Firemen),  one  of  the  chief  figures  of 
which  is  drawn  in  the  accompanying  sketch,  the  cur6 
hurrying  to  the  fire  with  a  ladder  on  his  shoulder  (1857). 
In  1852  he^settled  in  the  studio  in  the  Place  Pigalle, 
which  he  never  left,  and  there  he  was  surrounded  by  a 
few  tried  friends  like  Bida,  Ricard,  and  Pollet  the 
engraver.  Puvis  bravely  went  on  with  his  invariably  ill- 
received  efforts,  never  doubting  that  some  day  Fortune 
would  reveal  to  him  his  road  to  Damascus. 


III.  LES  POMPIERS  DE  VILLAGE.   (Village  Firemen). 


PLATE  IV.  LE  RETOUR  DE  CHASSE  (THE  RETURN 
FROM  THE  CHASE) 

IN  1854  the  artist's  brother  built  a  country  house 
in  Saone-et-Loire,  and  Puvis  offered  to  paint  the 
walls  of  the  large  dining-room.  He  painted  panels 
of  the  Four  Seasons  "  slightly  modernized,"  and  for 
his   central   picture   painted   the    Return    of   the    Pro- 
digal, "  with  the  usual  fatted  calf." 
"  It  was  a  piece  of  impudence  on  my  part,"  he  wrote 
twenty  years  later  to  a  friend,  "  and  my  family  must 
have  been  torn  between  fear  and  pride.  Think  of  it;  a 
beautiful  dining-room  in  an  entirely  new  style ! 
"  No  doubt  if  I  had  it  to  do  again  I  should  do  it  better; 
but,  as  a  beginning  in  decorative  art,  it  was  not  bad. 
At  any  rate  it  showed  me  the  way  to  my  road  to  Da- 
mascus." 

It  was,  in  fact,  this  episode,  told  with  so  much  humour 
and  simplicity,  that  put  an  end  to  Puvis's  hesitation. 
One  of  the  Four  Seasons,  repainted  and  enlarged,  was 
sent  to  the  Salon  of  1859,  with  the  title:  "  Un  Retour 
de  Chasse,  a  fragment  of  a  mural  painting,"  and,  on 
this  occasion,  the  jury  were  complacent. 
It  is  not  only  this  return  to  favour  that  makes  this 
picture  one  of  the  important  landmarks  in  the  artist's 
career.  In  its  noble  elegance  and  jocund  youth  the 
picture  is  worthy  of  the  master,  and  his  hand  is  shown 
in  the  style  of  the  drawing,  the  simplified  modelling, 
and  the  slender  bare  trees  in  the  background,  such  trees 
as  he  always  loved  in  their  rather  pitiful  grace.  Finally, 
and  above  all,  it  is  in  this  "  Retour  de  Chasse  "  that 
Puvis  seems  first  to  have  become  fully  conscious  of  his 
mission  as  a  decorator. 

5 


"  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes,"  wrote  Gautier  some  years 
later,  "  is  not  a  painter  of  pictures.  He  does  not  need 
the  easel,  but  scaffolding  and  large  wall  spaces.  His 
sense  of  ornament  and  decoration  is  shown  even  in 
the  smallest  details.  ...  In  an  age  of  prose  and  realism 
this  young  man  is  naturally  epic  and  monumental." 
Unfortunately  there  were  few  opportunities  for  a  young 
unknown  artist  to  try  his  hand  on  "  large  wall  spaces." 
About  this  time  he  was  given  a  chance  of  painting  four 
symbolical  figures:  Fantasy,  Vigilance,  Dreams,  and 
Poetry,  for  the  house  of  Mme  Claude  Vignon,  but, 
failing  official  commissions,  he  had  himself  to  plan  and 
execute  the  two  large  pictures  which  were  finally  to 
attract  public  attention. 


IV.   LE   RETOUR  DE  CHASSE.   (Return  from  the  Chase.) 


PLATE  V.  CONCORDIA 

"        A   LTHOUGH    M-     Puvis    de     Chavannes     has 
/%     already    exhibited    a    '  Retour    de    Chasse,' 
/— %    full  of  splendid  promise,"  wrote  Gautier  in 
•JL      -M^his  article  on  the  Salon  of  1861,  "  his  career 
may  really  be  said  to  have  begun  this  year.   He  has 
suddenly  emerged  from  obscurity:  the  light  of  success 
is  upon  him,  and  will  never  leave  him.  His  success  has 
been  very  great,  to  the  immense  credit  of  the  public." 
When  "  Concordia  "  and  "  Bellum  "  appeared  it  was 
impossible  for  anyone  to  remain  indifferent.  The  first 
especially,  with  its  full  serene  harmony,  its  curtain  of 
cypress  trees  with  doves  flying  towards  them,  its  flowering 
laurels,  the  murmuring  little  cascades  of  the  stream, 
the   lovely   Elysian  scene   shut   off  by  the   unscalable 
ramparts  of  high  mountains  (as  Maxime  du  Camp  said), 
moved  everybody  who  was  not  impervious  to  poetry. 
Gautier,  Paul  de  Saint- Victor,  Olivier  Merson,  Banville, 
Detecluze,  all  wrote  enthusiastic  articles,  though  in  all 
of  them  there  was  a  little  hesitation. 
Not  only  those  who  sided  against  the  artist,  like  Charles 
Blave,  Castagnary,  Timbal,  but  also  his  admirers  were 
disagreeably  surprised  by  the  colour  of  these  pictures. 
They  were,  it  was  said,  rather  faintly  tinted  cartoons 
than  pictures,  faded  frescoes,  old  tapestry. 
"  The  tones  of  reality,"  said  Olivier  Merson  more  kindly, 
"  are  softened  or  rather  washed  out,  bathed  in  a  silvery 
tender   atmosphere,   breathing  a  perfectly  serene   air, 
giving  the  figures  the  appearance  of  immortal  beings 
gathered  together  to  symbolize  the  charm,  sweetness 
and  peace  of  existence  in  Elysium."  But  even  Olivier 
Merson  was  a  little  perturbed  by  the  idea  that  Puvis 

7 


could  have  adopted  his  pale  colouring  deliberately  and 

not  for  exceptional  purposes. 

Perhaps  with  greater  reason  exception  was  taken  to  a 

sort   of  disharmony  in   the   modelling  of  the  various 

figures.  Beside  the  two  women  with  their  backs  turned 

towards  the   spectator — who  were   generally  admitted 

to  be  admirable — some  of  the  other  figures  seemed  to  be 

rather  perfunctory  and  incomplete. 

Gautier  took  these   reservations  at  their  true  value: 

"  And  criticism!  You  say  that  I  have  found  nothing  to 

criticize  and  that  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes  is  therefore 

perfect?  Not  by  any  means !  No.  But  here  is  a  budding 

painter.  We  must  not  kill  him  out  of  hand.  Let  us  suffer 

him  to  go  his  own  way.  We  will  criticize  him  later — 

when  he  has  nothing  but  qualities." 

Concordia  won  a  second  medal  for  Puvis.  It  was  bought 

by  the  State  for  6,000  francs  and  is  now  in  the  Picardy 

Museum. 


T 


PLATE  VI.  BELLUM 

»•  •  -^HIS  picture  is  now  in  the  main  gallery  of  the 
Picardy  Museum  and  is  hung  as  a  pendant  to 
Concordia,  with  which  it  appeared  in  the  Salon 
of  1 86 1.  The  artist  gave  it  to  the  citizens  of 
Amiens  so  that  the  two  pictures  should  not  be  separated 
when  Diet  the  architect  had  made  room  for  the  first 
in  the  recently  completed  building. 

It  was  not  bought  by  the  State  only  because  it  was 
generally  considered  to  be  inferior  to  Concordia,  and  per- 
haps the  general  opinion  was  right.  As  Maxime  du  Camp 
observed,  the  subject  was  less  suited  to  Puvis's  style: 
"  It  is  difficult  to  reconcile  calmness  with  violence." 
The  artist  had  avoided  the  difficulty  by  choosing  the 
moment  which  follows  the  fighting  and  the  affray,  when 
the  horizon  is  filled  with  the  thick  tragic  smoke  of  burned 
cities  and  crops  and  among  the  prisoners  and  the  wounded 
the  victors  sound  their  triumphant  blare  of  trumpets. 
That  the  painter  handled  the  victors  magnificently  was 
universally  admitted.  "  Fortunately  "  wrote  Paul  de 
Saint- Victor  "  there  is  an  admirable  group  in  the  barren 
waste  of  this  picture,  a  group  which  makes  it  great.  .  .  . 
There  are  three  horsemen  clad  in  skins,  all  together 
raising  their  long  trumpets  to  the  sky  and  sounding  the 
brazen  note  of  victory.  Nothing  could  be  more  grandiose 
than  these  three  trumpeters." 

But  Puvis's  technique  was  still  at  fault.  The  figures  are 
placed  together  without  any  real  or  necessary  inter- 
relation. They  are  separated  into  little  groups  of  three, 
as  Olivier  Merson  said,  and  each  group  lives  in  a  different 
atmosphere.  More  than  that  there  are  several  colour 
schemes,  several  systems  of  modelling  and  drawing  in 

9 


this  decorative  mosaic,  and  it  is  easy  to  understand 
Thorn's  anxiety  lest,  in  spite  of  all  the  promise  of  his 
talent,  Puvis  de  Chavannes  should  not  succeed  in  finding 
himself  and  breaking  away  from  the  reminiscences 
necessarily  created  by  this  sort  of  conventional  sym- 
bolism, and  his  doubt  as  to  whether  he  would  have 
genius  and  original  power  enough  to  "  renew  the 
personnel  and  stock-in-trade  of  the  old  allegorical 
theatre." 


10 


PLATE  VII.  LE  TRAVAIL  (WORK) 

PUVIS'S  style  became  more  definite  in  the  Salon  of 
1863,  in  his  two  new  pictures  "  Le  Travail  "  and 
"  Le  Repos,"  which  are  inseparable  from  the  two 
preceding   pictures   and   are   now  in  the  same 
gallery.  It  would  seem  that  in  their  more  ample  and  more 
masterly  grouping,  and  in  their  simpler  and  larger  har- 
mony of  colour — a  few  clear  and  delicate  tones  on  a  dark 
blue  ground — these  two  pictures  ought  to  have  been 
welcomed  as  a  manifest  advance.  But  the  taste  of  the 
public  was  behind  that  of  the  artist,  and  the  critics,  who, 
in  1861  had  assigned  him  a  place  on  the  Capitol,  in  1863 
condemned  him  to  the  Tarpeian    rock,  as   Hector   de 
C  alii  as  said. 

It  had  been  said  that  Puvis  was  more  a  thinker  than  a 
painter.  This  misapprehension  grew  and  was  made  an 
excuse  for  a  long  discussion  of  the  ideas  of  his  pictures. 
Castagnary  found  fault  with  him  for  not  having  repre- 
sented work  in  its  "  rational  and  absolute  unity."  The 
woman  giving  her  breast  to  the  new-born  child  was 
only  regarded  as  a  "  woman  in  travail  "  introduced  into 
a  corner  of  the  picture  as  a  bad  pun.  The  splendid  tran- 
quil actions  of  the  workers  were  regarded  as  a  mere 
paradox.  "  These  smiths,"  said  Saint- Victor,  among 
others,  "  are  standing  asleep  round  their  anvil.  Such 
workmen  would  take  months  to  make  a  girder  and  a 
whole  day  to  forge  a  nail.  ..." 
Abuse  of  abstraction,  lack  of  physical  health  and 
individual  life,  exaggerated  fore-shortening  in  drawing, 
figures  reduced  to  silhouettes,  grey  atmosphere,  airless, 
lightless  landscapes,  such  are  the  defects  pointed  out  by 
the  majority  of  writers.  They  even  went  so  far  as  to  deny 

ii 


the  painter's  personality.  "  It  seems  to  me,"  wrote 
Arthur  Stevens,  "  that  any  artist  who  had  will,  judgment, 
erudition  and  intelligence,  and  no  greatness  of  character, 
could  paint  such  pictures  as  these  by  studying  the 
Renaissance  painters  and  examining  the  prints  in  the 
Engravings  Department." 

It  is  noteworthy,  however,  that  even  the  most  grudging 
of  the  critics  did,  unconsciously,  show  a  very  significant 
deference.  "  M.  Puvis's  pictures  "  said  Arthur  Stevens  in 
conclusion,  "  are  great  in  manner  and  shapely  and 
beautiful  to  the  eye.  I  fancy  he  works  only  for  his  own 
satisfaction  and  I  commend  him  for  it,  for  the  man  who 
is  not  the  servant  of  his  work,  who  works  for  fame  and 
reward,  or  even  more  pitifully,  for  money,  shuts  himself 
off  from  good  and  well-being  and  weakens  his  forces." 


12 


PLATE  VIII.  LE  REPOS  (REST) 

»    •   -^HE  figures  in  "  Le  Travail"  were  not  working 

hard  enough  for  the  public.  To  balance  that 

opinion  no  doubt  they  thought  the  figures  in 

JL       "  Le  Repos  "  were  not  sufficiently  restful.  Do 

people  rest  standing  up? 

Let  us  turn  to  the  conscientious  Paul  Mantz  for  less 
cavilling  appreciation.  "  Le  Repos,"  he  said,  "  is  a 
gathering  of  shepherds  round  an  old  herdsman,  who, 
full  of  years  and  memories,  is  telling  his  young  auditors 
legends  of  old  days.  The  figures  are  simple,  but  they  are 
beautiful,  and  under  the  brush  of  any  other  painter  they 
might  have  been  sufficient. 

"  Unfortunately,  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes  has  adopted  a 
sort  of  shorthand  technique  and  an  arbitrary  system  of 
colouring  which  robs  his  figures  of  reality.  His  landscapes 
alone  have  any  vigour :  the  background  to  the  group  of 
figures  in  this  picture  is  satisfying  to  the  imagination, 
if  not  to  the  eye,  by  the  grandeur  of  its  nobly  balanced 
lines.  But  the  inward  modelling  of  the  figures  can 
hardly  be  said  to  exist.  .  .  .  And  to  this  inadequacy 
must  be  traced  the  absolute  absence  of  movement  and 
life.  .  .  .  The  women's  bodies  are  pure  abstractions: 
they  are  expressed  only  in  colourless  masses,  or  rather 
in  a  sort  of  plastery  white,  which  makes  holes  in  the 
picture  and  entirely  destroys  perspective  and  probability. 
The  eye  of  the  spectator  is  lost  in  the  distances  which  are 
quite  irrationally  arranged,  for,  as  regards  light  and 
effect,  everything  is  systematized.  M.  Puvis  ignores  sun 
and  shadow;  he  knows  nothing  of  night  and  day;  his 
scenes  are  set  in  the  veiled  light  of  limbo  and  beneath 
its  diffused  rays  everything  fades  away  and  is  lost. 

13 


Since  M.  Puvis  is  so  lacking  in  colour,  reality,  and  life 
he  ought,  like  Cornelius  or  Kaulbach,  to  be  content 
with  black  and  white  cameos  and  monochrome  cartoons. 
.  .  .  But  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes  has  a  distinctive  feeling 
for  line,  and  even  when  they  are  led  astray,  we  cannot 
but  admire  and  love  such  ambitions  as  his." 
It  goes  without  saying  that  the  general  severity  was 
shared  by  the  purchasing  committee.  "  Le  Repos  "  and 
"  Le  Travail  "  were  left  in  the  artist's  studio  until  the 
day  when  Diet,  the  architect,  came  and  asked  him  for 
two  more  of  his  pictures  for  the  staircase  of  the  Picardy 
Museum.  The  municipality  had  not  the  money  to  buy 
them  and  with  his  usual  disinterestedness,  Puvis  made 
them  a  present  of  these  two  pictures. 


PLATE  IX.  DESSIN  POUR  LE  REPOS  (A  DRAWING 
FOR  LE  REPOS) 

O  you  know  a  single  artist  in  love  with  his 
t,"  wrote  Puvis  in  1861,  "who  has  in 
him  the  marvellous  balm  which  is  called 
composure?  ...  To  me  composure  is  a  near 
neighbour  of  conceit.  .  .  .  With  a  love  of  beautiful  things, 
I  fall  into  moments  of  incredulity,  ignorance  and  division 
of  mind,  ...  in  spite  of  the  inevitable  onslaughts  of 
others  or  of  my  own  nature  .  .  .,  without  the  smallest 
material  or  moral  encouragement,  .  .  .  with  no  protection 
from  my  accomplishment  which  is  very  far  indeed  from 
its  height.  ...  I  am  then  filled  with  an  ineffable  love 
for  study,  and  the  perfecting  of  the  little  knowledge  that 
I  have  in  the  direction  which  is  preferable  to  me." 
We  have  even  better  proof  than  this  written  confession 
of  the  blind  struggle  between  the  inward  force  driving 
the  artist  on  to  his  goal  and  the  doubts  which  assail 
him  in  the  moment  of  realization. 

Thanks  to  certain  exhibitions  of  his  drawings,  going  as 
far  back  as  1886,  and  also  to  the  gifts  by  his  heirs  to  the 
various  museums,  (the  Luxembourg,  the  Petit-Palais, 
Amiens,  Lyons,  Marseilles,  Rouen)  we  are  able  to 
follow  the  sustained  efforts  of  the  marvellous  draughts- 
man who  was  so  often  accused  of  carelessness  and 
inexperience. 

His  work  took  shape  slowly  in  a  series  of  rough  sketches, 
followed  by  powerful  red-chalk  drawings,  like  that  of 
the  two  men  here  reproduced,  which  was  a  part  of  the 
preparation  of  the  "  Repos  "  at  Amiens,  and  in  these 
every  figure  was  built  up  with  as  much  power  as  sensi- 
bility. After  this  stage  it  was  only  left  to  make  these 

15 


fragments  live  in  the  general  life  of  the  picture.  Every 
detail  is  cast  and  re-cast  before  it  will  fit  in  with  the 
general  effect.  The  man  sharpening  a  scythe  in  the 
drawing  changed  that  employment  for  netting.  His 
companion,  whose  pose  and  muscular  development  are 
no  doubt  exaggerated,  was  replaced  by  a  beautiful  young 
woman  whose  long  lithe  figure  and  pearly  skin  are  now 
resplendent  in  the  foreground  of  the  picture. 
Every  figure,  every  note  must  justify  its  presence  in  the 
picture,  and  it  is  no  less  instructive  to  see  what  Puvis 
discovers  gradually  in  his  studies  than  what  he  mercilessly 
sacrifices  later  on  if  the  higher  interest  of  the  picture 
demands  it.  "  The  smallest  hint  of  a  stop-gap,"  said  he 
to  M.  Vachon,  "  is  enough  to  bring  the  whole  thing 
toppling  down  by  making  the  eye  suspicious  and  distrust- 
ful; an  insignificant  detail,  if  it  be  alien  to  the  parent 
idea,  is  enough  to  destroy  the  whole  force  of  the  emotion." 


16 


PLATE  X.  L'AUTOMNE  (AUTUMN) 

IN  the  Salon  of  1864  the  artist  regained  the  ground 
he    had    lost    and    public    opinion    was    generally 
favourable.  In  those  far-off  days  the  critics  used  to 
make  a  prolonged  study  of  the  pictures  they  had  to 
judge.  They  did  not  think  they  had  disposed  of  a  painter 
when  they  had  pinned  on  to  him  one  of  the  five  or  six 
formulae  of  the  studios  or  had  selected  the  appropriate 
label     from    the    manuals    of    history    and    aesthetics. 
Lengthy  descriptions  were  still  fashionable  and  when 
the  critic  was  a  poet  like  Gautier  there  is  a  great  deal 
to  be  said  for  this  method. 

"  In  the  midst  of  an  orchard  of  heavily-laden  trees," 
said  Gautier,  "  the  leaves  of  which  are  beginning  to 
turn,  showing  the  ripe  grapes  beneath,  a  beautiful  fair- 
haired  girl,  tall  and  slender,  is  bending  a  branch  of 
the  tree,  from  which  the  vine  is  hanging,  with  one 
hand,  and  with  the  other  she  is  plucking  a  bunch  of 
grapes.  The  movement  of  her  arms,  raised  above  her 
head,  gives  her  body  lines  and  curves  that  are  quite 
admirable  in  their  elegance.  A  piece  of  pale  pink  drapery 
covers  her  left  hip  and  shows  up  the  pale  amber  of  her 
skin.  .  .  . 

"  On  the  right  another  girl,  no  doubt  her  sister,  is  leaning 
against  the  trunk  of  the  fig  tree  which  supports  the  vine, 
and  in  her  hands  is  holding  a  basket  into  which  the 
bunch  of  grapes  is  to  fall.  She  has  her  back  towards  us, 
showing  the  graceful  joining  of  her  head  and  shoulders, 
a  charming  neck  on  which  is  a  thick  knot  of  red  hair, 
of  the  shade  so  dear  to  painters.  .  .  .  The  attachment  of 
her  shoulders,  the  flexibility  of  the  spinal  column,  the 
protuberance  of  her  hip,  the  crossing  of  her  legs  .  .  . 
c  17 


all  combine  to  form  one  of  those  poses  as  rhythmical 
as  a  beautiful  verse,  in  which  there  is  a  harmonious 
balance  and  poise  of  form  as  sweet  to  the  eye  as  a  musical 
cadence  is  to  the  ear.  .  .  . 

"The  general  tonality  of  the  picture  is  maintained  in 
that  fresco  colour-scheme  affected  by  the  artist,  which 
is  so  admirably  suited  to  decorative  painting.  It  is  clear, 
bright,  without  the  strong  shadows  which  make  holes 
in  the  walls;  but  the  localities  are  richer  and  more 
vigorous  than  in  his  previous  pictures.  .  .  .  The  crafts- 
manship is  finer  and  closer.  ...  A  more  poetical  expres- 
sion of  the  warm,  healthy,  fruitful  autumn  of  some 
ideal  Tempe  were  impossible." 

The  picture,  which  was  awarded  a  medal,  is  now  at 
Lyons.  A  smaller  replica — with  a  few  variations — was 
exhibited  in  the  Salon  of  1885. 


18 


X.   L'AUTOMNE.   (Autumn.) 


PLATE  XI.  A  LA  FONTAINE  (AT  THE  WELL) 

A""ONG    the    easel    pictures    exhibited    by    the 
artist  about  this  time,  without  any  remark- 
able success,   is  one  which  is  closely  allied 
to  the  pictures  at  Amiens,  and  may  here  be 
profitably  considered  as  displaying  one  of  the  elements 
of  Puvis's  style. 

It  was  an  intimate  and  familiar  subject  that  he  showed 
in  the  Salon  of  1868  under  the  title  of  "  A  la  Fontaine." 
But  here  again,  in  a  beautiful  wooded  valley,  near  the 
well  whither  pitchers  are  taken  to  be  filled,  "  the  scene 
is  in  the  Golden  Age."  The  figures  in  this  bucolic  picture 
(they  had  already  appeared  in  "  Le  Repos  ")  belong  to 
no  fixed  time  or  place.  Or  rather  they  belong  to  that 
race  which  was  begotten  of  Greek  statuary  revised  and 
corrected  by  the  Italian  painters.  The  young  woman  is 
wearing  the  petasus,  and  the  Venus  of  Milo  is  nobly 
bending  down  opposite  her. 

So  much  has  been  said — and  so  justifiably — against 
academic  art  that  it  almost  requires  courage  not  to 
repudiate  the  considerable  part  played  by  academic 
tradition  in  Puvis's  work.  But  doctrines  are  narrow 
and  art  is  always  transcending  them.  Burger  was  right 
in  claiming  the  right  of  modern  realism  to  style  and 
maintaining  that  it  was  as  good  as  that  of  traditional 
allegory  clothed  in  Graeco-Italian  form.  He  was  wrong 
in  wishing  to  condemn  every  artist  to  sterility  if  he 
refused  to  throw  over  this  "  useless  art  "  and  respect- 
fully donned  the  "  academic  old  clothes." 
There  is  no  disguising  the  classical  reminiscences  in 
Puvis's  work,  especially  at  this  time,  when  he  was 
gradually  feeling  his  way  to  his  own  vocabulary  of  form 

C2  19 


and  symbol.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  does  not  amount  to 
very  much.  Whether,  as  he  then  did,  he  turned  to  the 
academic  lexicon,  or,  as  he  did  later  on,  sometimes  used 
the  modern  language,  he  was,  above  all,  interested  in 
the  cadence,  harmony,  and  balance  of  his  phrasing,  and 
it  was  in  them  that  he  expressed  his  own  personal 
sensibility.  "  I  have  always  tried,"  he  said  to  M.  Thie- 
bault  Sisson,  "to  be  more  and  more  sober,  more  and 
more  simple.  ...  I  have  condensed,  laboured,  com- 
pressed. ...  I  have  always  tried  to  make  every  action 
express  something,  and  colour  merge  into  and  har- 
monize with  the  whiteness  of  its  frame  instead  of  being 
in  contrast  with  it,  as  it  has  always  been  hitherto.  .  .  . 
And  in  all  my  work,  let  it  be  clearly  understood,  there 
has  been  no  deliberate  seeking  after  symbolism.  I  have 
tried  always  to  say  as  much  as  possible  in  the  fewest 
possible  words." 


20 


XI.  A  LA  FONTAINE.   (At  the  Well.) 


PLATE  XII.  AVE  PICARDIA  NUTRIX  (THE  RIVER) 

A~TER   the   success   of  the  four  great  pictures 
given  by  the  State  and  the  artist  to  the  Picardy 
Museum,  the  town  council  of  Amiens  decided 
to  commission  Puvis  to  paint  a  new  picture. 
This  was  the  "  Ave  Picardia  Nutrix,"  which  was  in  the 
Salon  of  1865. 

This  great  picture  now  hangs  above  the  landing  of  the 
noble  staircase  between  the  "  Travail  "  and  "  Le  Repos." 
A  great  central  door  separated  the  two  halves,  which  in 
turn  were  cut  into  by  two  side  doors.  On  the  left  is 
represented  an  apple-gathering :  on  the  right  the  mend- 
ing of  nets  and  the  construction  of  a  bridge  over  one  of 
the  innumerable  arms  of  the  Somme. 
"  There  is  nothing  peculiarly  Picardian  about  it,"  said 
Paul  Mantz,  "  but  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes  delights  in 
epic  generalizations,  and  with  good  reason,  and  he  pre- 
fers aggrandizement  to  particularization." 

We  take  that  to  mean  that  Puvis  did  not  try  to  re- 
produce any  particular  place  or  scene  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Amiens.  He  was  faithful  to  his  usual  procedure, 
and  only  borrowed  from  the  living  reality  a  few  apt 
colours  which  he  pondered  long  and  used  to  give  form 
and  body  to  a  general  impression.  In  accordance  with  his 
formula,  he  tried  to  "do  much  with  little."  A  few 
trunks  of  trees,  water,  a  wide  sky  over  a  flat  country 
were  enough  to  localize  the  scene  and  did  not  necessitate 
long  study  in  the  open  air.  But  it  is  to  be  noted  that  a 
keen  feeling  for  Nature  is  at  the  bottom  of  his  art. 
"  Nature  moves  me  profoundly,  I  assure  you,"  he  wrote 
in  1891,  "  and  for  that  reason  it  is  impossible  for  me 
to  take  it  in  strong  doses.  A  quarter  of  an  hour's  stroll 

21 


along  a  path  that  gives  me  pleasure  is  enough  to  keep 
my  brain  supplied  for  a  long  time.  You  must  blame 
nothing  but  its  weakness  for  that." 

With  these  essential  elements  Puvis  created  a  landscape 
with  all  the  "  vagueness  and  tenderness  of  tone  of  a 
Corot,"  as  Gautier  remarked.  Like  that  admirable  land- 
scape painter,  he  knew  nothing  more  beautiful  to  paint 
than  the  freshness  of  a  bend  of  a  river,  or  the  noble 
melancholy  of  an  undulating  country.  There  is  no  need 
to  go  far  to  find  that.  "  For  my  part,"  he  wrote  to  a 
traveller,  "  I  am  fixed  in  one  place  and  that  limited,  and 
for  new  vitality  I  turn  always  homewards.  ...  A  few 
flowering  shrubs,  a  scented  wood,  are  my  delight.  It 
is  chamber  music  compared  with  the  mighty  harmonies 
that  have  entranced  you:  but  my  music  has  its  own 
grandeur,  its  own  calm,  penetrating  grace." 


22 


w 

K 
-W 


PLATE  XIII.  AVE  PICARDIA  NUTRIX  (THE  APPLE 
GATHERING) 

p  •  ^HERE  were  still  many  whose  ears  remained 
insensible  to  this  "  chamber  music,"  and  no 
doubt  Louis  Auvray  represented  the  opinion 
JL  of  the  majority  when  he  said  that  he  was 
frozen  by  the  cold  monotonous  colouring  of  the  "  Ave 
Picardia."  But  the  number  of  Puvis's  adherents  was 
increasing.  Duvat,  for  instance,  maintains  that  Puvis's 
colouring  was  at  this  time  more  decorative  and  more 
subtle  than  ever  it  was.  When  the  artist's  pictures  were 
hung  on  the  walls  for  which  they  were  intended  it  was 
difficult  not  to  admit  that  these  alleged  defects  of  colour- 
ing were  in  reality  a  wonderful  revolution  in  decorative  art. 
"  Those  of  us,"  said  Gautier,  "  who  have  seen  these 
beautiful  pictures  in  the  Amiens  Museum  on  the  walls 
for  which  the  artist  painted  them,  have  been  struck  by 
the  harmony  and  unity,  the  powerful  sweetness  of  tone 
and  the  rich  tranquillity  of  these  frescoes  on  canvas, 
which  were  only  made  to  look  pale  by  the  more  or  less 
boisterous  pictures  among  which  they  were  exhibited, 
while  here  they  harmonize  perfectly  with  the  dull  tones 
of  the  stone. 

"...  We  must  not  ask  of  decorative  painting  illusion, 
nor  deception,  nor  any  kind  of  real  truth.  Decorative 
painting  should  hang  on  the  walls  like  a  veil  of  colour, 
and  not  penetrate  them." 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  believe  that  the  artist  was 
doing  violence  to  his  nature  in  sacrificing  strong  con- 
trasts and  oppositions  of  colours  and  clinging  to  his 
scheme  of  delicate  greys,  the  subtle  harmonies  of  which 
he  harmonized  so  deftly. 

23 


"  I  have  a  weakness  which  I  hardly  dare  confess,"  he 
wrote  to  a  friend  in  1861.  "(It)  consists  in  my  predilec- 
tion for  a  rather  gloomy  aspect,  low  skies,  solitary 
plains,  every  blade  of  grass  of  which  whispers  its  own 
little  song  under  the  soft  breath  of  the  south  wind.  .  .  . 
"  I  am  waiting  impatiently  for  bad  weather,  and  am 
already  negotiating  with  an  umbrella  merchant.  I  assure 
you  that  bad  weather  is  much  more  vivid  than  fine 
weather.  The  great  blue  canopy  of  the  sky  absorbs  too 
much ;  the  finer  the  weather,  the  blacker  the  world  .  .  .  ; 
while  a  great  veil  of  a  subtle  grey,  subtle  and  fine  as  the 
wings  of  the  birds  you  speak  of,  a  grey  which  gives  the 
smallest  plant  its  colour,  and  its  full  value  to  every 
object — such  a  grey  is  the  sweet  sustained  accompani- 
ment that  suffers  everything  to  sing:  it  is  the  marvel 
of  marvels:  at  any  rate,  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  I  love 
it  more  than  anything  else." 


24 


PLATE  XIV.  AVE  PICARDIA  NUTRIX  (DRAWING 
FOR  THE  SPINNER) 

*    m   -^HE  moment  had  not  yet  come  when  the  critics 
could  surrender  to  the  charm  of  his  art  without 


1 


cavilling  at  the  means  employed.  At  that  time 
it  was  thought  that  Puvis  attained  his  object 
"  in  spite  of  "  his  colour  and  drawing,  and  the  most  well- 
meaning  of  the  critics  went  on  advising  him  to  take 
more  care  with  his  execution. 

"  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  to  whom  we  have  hitherto 
been  able  to  give  only  tempered  praise,"  said  Paul 
Mantz,  "  is  this  year  much  more  happily  inspired  .  .  .; 
his  groups  are  nobly  balanced;  although  the  figures  are 
few  the  canvas  is  well  filled,  and  the  eye  travels  with 
pleasure  over  the  movements  which  are  so  just  in  their 
severity,  and  the  attitudes  which  are  so  happily  con- 
trived. It  seems  to  us  that  the  painter,  who  hitherto 
had  contented  himself  with  a  rough  indication  of  his 
figures  by  a  sort  of  shorthand  modelling,  has  taken  a 
great  deal  of  trouble  with  his  drawing.  It  is  a  real 
advance,  and  we  may  hope  that  M.  Puvis  will  one  day 
supply  the  defects  of  his  early  education  with  hard  con- 
sistent work.  He  has  now  the  instinct  for  design,  but  he 
lacks  the  science  of  it." 

"  The  execution  is  very  inadequate,"  said  Felix  Jahyer, 
"  a  thick  black  line  surrounds  each  figure  in  such  a  way 
that  there  is  no  roundness  in  the  bodies  and  they  seem 
all  the  more  flat  inasmuch  as  the  modelling  is  com- 
pletely at  fault.  But  in  spite  of  these  material  defects  .  .  . 
the  weakness  of  the  execution  does  not  now  prevent  one 
feeling  the  nobility  of  the  idea,  the  distinction  of  the 
artist's  mind,  and  the  firmness  of  his  intentions.  Every 

25 


one  recognizes  in  him  the  exact  allegorical  feeling  and 
his  power  of  giving  it  a  vague  expression  of  grandeur. 
The  artist  must  now  definitely  take  rank  among  the 
most  distinguished  representatives  of  great  art." 
That  the  artist  was  not  lacking  in  the  "  science  of  design  " 
could  have  been  proved  over  and  over  again  to  these 
counsellors  by  the  admirable  sketch  for  "  La  Fileuse  " 
here  reproduced.  And  yet  there  was  some  truth  in  these 
reservations,  since  Puvis's  design  was  to  undergo  much 
fundamental  modification.  But  it  was  precisely  in  the 
direction  of  abbreviation  and  simplification,  from  which 
the  critics  tried  to  turn  him,  that  the  artist  was  to  find 
the  formula  which  he  had  sought  so  untiringly  for  so 
many  years. 


26 


XIV.  AVE  PICARDIA  NUTRIX: 
DRAWING   FOR  THE  SPINNER. 


PLATE  XV.  LE  SOMMEIL  (SLEEP) 

PUVIS'S  quest  at  last  led  him  to  turn  his  back  on 
anatomical  exercises.  He  had  already  subordina- 
ted modelling  to  outline,   sometimes  justifying 
those  who  reproached  him  with  meagreness  and 
dryness.  It  only  remained  to  envelop  his  figures  in  an 
atmosphere  which  would  reduce  relief  to  the  essential 
masses  and  so  preserve  their  volume  without  depriving 
them  of  their  simplicity.  In  this  respect  "  Le  Sommeil," 
now  in  the  Lille  Museum,  which  was  exhibited  in  the 
Salon  of  1867  may  be  considered  to  mark  a  turning- 
point  in  the  artist's  career. 

Paul  de  Saint-Victor  confessed  himself  almost  wholly 
captured  by  this  "  great  and  noble  sketch  .  .  .  the  paint- 
ing of  which  is  more  musical  than  plastic,  speaking  less 
to  the  eyes  than  to  the  mind  .  .  .  ;  the  indecision  of  the 
drawing,  the  vagueness  of  the  colour  are  here  in  harmony 
with  the  subject.  It  is  a  lovely  dream  traced  with  a  silver 
pencil  upon  the  grey  canvas  of  the  night.  It  were  im- 
possible to  praise  too  highly  the  majestic  simplicity  of 
the  landscape.  There  is  a  quality  about  it  that  is  almost 
virginal  and  august." 

But  Paul  Mantz  still  found  fault:  "  There  is  nothing  in 
the  colouring,"  he  said,  "  to  shock  the  eye.  A  large 
crepuscular  tonality  envelops  the  group  of  sleepers  in 
the  foreground  and  extends  over  the  silent  fields  far 
into  the  distance;  in  the  background  an  ambiguous 
star  is  sinking  to  the  horizon  or  ascending  the  sky,  for  it 
is  impossible  to  know  whether  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes 
meant  to  represent  sunset  or  moonrise.  It  is  one  of  the 
defects  of  his  picture ;  but  the  artist  who  has  for  so  long 
ignored  colour  and  renounced  it  has  never  known  its 

27 


sister,  light.  Why,  if  he  will  not  study  Nature,  does  he  not 
turn  to  a  landscape  by  Corot  or  Daubigny?  ...  As  for 
the  labourers  and  shepherds  who  are  lying  asleep  in  the 
foreground,  resting  after  their  toil,  they  are  sleeping 
rather  emphatically,  as  is  to  be  expected  from  an  artist 
who  has  rummaged  among  the  Italian  masters  in  the 
Bibliotheque,  and  has  been  unable  to  forget  them.  The 
drawing  of  the  picture  consists  entirely  of  outline. 
"  M.  Puvis  makes  fine  plans  for  his  pictures;  but,  like  the 
German  painters,  he  disdains  craftsmanship  and,  as  a 
fatal  consequence  he  never  expresses  more  than  half 
his  idea." 


28 


PLATE  XVI.  MARSEILLE,  PORTE  DE  L'ORIENT 
(MARSEILLES,  GATE  OF  THE  EAST) 

PUVIS'S  fame  had  sufficiently  increased  since  the 
"  Retour  de  Chasse  "  for  the  citizens  of  Mar- 
seilles to  realize  the  importance  of  the  gift  that 
had  been  made  them.  Therefore  in  1867  they 
commissioned  him  to  paint  two  large  pictures  for  the 
Fine  Arts   Museum  in  the  Palais  de  Longchamps,  the 
price  to  be  ten  thousand  francs. 

These  pictures  were  shown  in  the  Salon  of  1869.  Their 
exceptional  size  procured  them  a  place  on  the  staircase 
of  honour  leading  to  the  galleries. 

In  "Massalia,  Colonie  Grecque"  there  are  a  few  little 
groups  of  fishermen  and  merchants  standing  on  the 
banks  of  a  river,  and  here  and  there  white  buildings  are 
in  course  of  construction. 

The  decorative  arrangement  of  Marseille,  Porte  de 
L'Orient  was  more  difficult  to  contrive.  Puvis  wished 
to  represent  the  large  welcome  given  by  a  maritime  city 
to  vessels  from  distant  lands  and  at  first  thought  of 
painting  the  sea  with  many  ships,  seen  from  the  quays 
of  the  town  itself.  However  he  found  it  necessary  to 
reverse  this  order.  The  foreground  is  filled  with  a  ship 
whose  passengers  belong  to  various  Levantine  races. 
It  is  just  coming  into  view  of  the  town  standing  on  the 
horizon  above  the  blue  sea  with  its  jetties  and  buildings 
gleaming  in  the  light. 

Year  by  year  the  artist's  craftsmanship  was  growing 
more  simple  and  more  humble  and  making  more  and 
more   audacious   sacrifices,   and   on  this   occasion  the 
critics  adopted  a  tone  of  peculiar  irritation. 
Castagnary  was  particularly  violent:  "  Fantastic  colour- 

29 


ing  .  .  .  painted  with  such  a  faltering,  fumbling  hand 
that  there  is  in  the  modelling  not  even  the  relief  of  a 
mantelpiece.  ...  So  much  the  worse  for  Marseilles  which 
is  contemned  to  become  the  washpot  of  bad  painting! 
...  By  placing  these  pitiful  decorations  at  the  entrance 
to  the  gallery,  so  that  the  public  cannot  help  seeing  them 
in  all  their  unprofitableness,  the  directors  are  running 
a  great  risk  of  damping  enthusiasm  and  sending  visitors 
away. 

"  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes  neither  draws  nor  paints,  he 
composes:  that  is  his  speciality  But  does  he  compose 
after  Nature's  fashion  with  living  creatures  .  .  .  ?  Not  a 
bit  of  it.  To  express  what  he  calls  an  idea  he  has  to  use 
imaginary  bodies  moving  in  an  imaginary  setting.  .  .  . 
The  whole  thing  is  cowardly,  feeble,  uncertain,  dirty  in 
colour  and  melancholy  in  aspect.  ..." 


PLATE  XVII.  SAINT  JEAN-BAPTISTE  (SAINT  JOHN 
THE  BAPTIST) 

"  "W"       A   Decollation  de  Saint  Jean-Baptiste,"  which 
was  exhibited  in  the  Universal  Exhibition  of 
.1889,    was    considered    an    outrage    in    the 
JL^Salon  of  1870. 

J.  Goujon  wrote:  "  Among  painters  there  is  said  to  be  a 
stir  about  this  eccentric  piece  of  work.  The  public  only 
laughs."  "Never, "said  Marius Chaumelin,  "did  Epinal's 
imagery  produce  anything  more  grotesque  in  its  figure 
drawing  or  more  false  in  its  colour." 
"What  a  grotesque  vignette!"  cried  Castagnary. 
"  The  three  figures  are  all  set  in  the  same  plane  in 
attitudes  almost  childishly  naive.  The  Saint  does  not  look 
like  a  cripple,  as  has  been  said.  Rather  he  looks  as  though 
he  were  sinking  into  the  ground;  quite  obviously 
he  is  being  swallowed  up  before  our  eyes.  He  is  buried 
up  to  his  knees.  One  may  bet  that  by  the  time  the  sword 
reaches  him  the  Saint  will  have  disappeared;  the  blade 
will  cleave  the  empty  air." 

"  We  had  best  consider  this  picture  as  a  passing  incident, " 
said  Elie  Saurin,  an  admirer  of  Puvis's  previous  work. 
Among  those  who  saw  something  else  in  the  "  Saint 
Jean-Baptiste  "  than  an  "  amusing  caricature  "  were 
Ren6  Menard  and  Georges  Lafenestre  whose  defence  of 
it  was  this: 

"  Puvis  de  Chavannes,"  he  said,  "  has  treated  his  subject 
with  profundity  and  lofty  naivete.  .  .  .  This  picture,  being 
very  profound  in  its  art  and  very  real  in  its  nobility,  has 
naturally  aroused  hilarity.  But  there  is  nothing  in  it 
truly  to  excite  amusement  or  surprise.  M.  Puvis  de 
Chavannes  is  one  of  the  few  painters  who  have  the 

31 


courage  to  consider  art  as  something  more  than  a  futile 
and  paltry  trick  of  illusion;  he  believes,  as  the  men  of 
past  ages  believed,  that  painting  is  a  means  of  expression, 
that  the  hand  executes  but  the  mind  directs.  The  battle 
he  is  fighting  is  not  futile.  His  work  will  live  longer  than 
that  of  the  scoffers  because  it  rests  on  more  general 
and  more  durable  principles  of  art.  In  its  general  aspect, 
by  the  potent  tranquil  charm  of  colouring,  in  its  poetic 
aspect,  by  the  Tightness  of  the  attitudes  and  facial 
expressions,  in  its  technique,  by  its  force  of  style  and 
largeness  of  design,  the  '  Decollation  de  Saint  Jean  '  is 
one  of  the  most  important  pictures  in  the  Salon." 


PLATE  XVIII.  LES  JEUNES  FILLES  ET  LA  MORT 
(GIRLS  AND  DEATH) 

IN  the  "  Saint  Jean-Baptiste  "  the  artist  was  granted 
a  certain  modicum  of  indulgence  on  account  of 
two  finely  drawn  torsos.  But  in  the  Salon  of  1870 
he  had  also  another  picture,  "  La  Madeleine  au 
Desert,"  from  which  he  had  rigorously  excluded  any 
display  of  craftsmanship.    The  Saint  is  standing  with 
a  skull  in  her  hand  looking  for  all  the  world  like  an 
ostrich  egg,  and  her  long  thin  silhouette  is  set  against 
a  dull  rock.  The  foreground  is  scantily  filled  with  a  few 
stones  inhabited  by  one  wretched  little  lizard.  An  arid 
plain  stretches  away  to  the  horizon.  And  that  is  all.  It  is 
probable  that  even  his  most  kindly  well-wishers  were 
rather  put  out  of  countenance  by  this  picture  of  an 
almost  beggarly  humility. 

The  same  year  the  artist  was  inspired  by  the  agony  and 
hope  of  the  Siege  to  paint  two  more  of  these  long  wan 
figures:  "  Le  Ballon  "  and  "  Le  Pigeon  Voyageur," 
which  in  1874  were  sold  by  lot  in  Chicago — queer  pictures 
in  which  Puvis  tackled  modern  subjects  without  any 
change  in  his  usual  methods. 

In  the  Salon  of  1872  Puvis  de  Chavannes  was  a  member 
of  the  famous  jury  which,  among  other  pictures,  rejected 
the  "  Femme  Couch£e  "  of  the  unhappy  Courbet,  but  he 
took  no  part  in  that  wretched  vindictive  campaign.  At 
the  very  outset  he  sent  in  his  resignation  to  escape  being 
a  party  to  a  system  of  intolerance  from  which  he  had 
himself  suffered  so  long. 

His  independence  needed  courage  and  in  a  very  short  time 
Puvis  met  with  the  consequences.  After  twelve  years  of  suc- 
cess he  had  one  of  his  pictures,  "Les  Jeunes  Filles  et  la 
D  33 


Mort ' '  rejected  by  the  very  jury  from  which  he  had  resigned. 
It  is  a  strange  piece  of  work  in  its  rather  literary  concep- 
tion, one  of  those  pictures  which  give  us  to  think  when 
the  artist  defends  himself  against  the  charge  of  being 
a  thinker  and  a  mystic. 

"  How  little  do  these  dreadful  connoisseurs  know  me," 
he  wrote  in  1888,  "  who,  forgetting  the  profound  and 
faithful  love  I  have  shown  for  everything  in  Nature, 
try  to  confine  me  to  a  few  deliberate  incursions  in  the 
region  of  philosophy  which  I  abhor!  " 


34 


XVIII.   LES  JEUNES  FILLES  ET  LA  MORT. 
(Girls  and  Death). 


PLATE  XIX.  L'ESPERANCE  (HOPE) 

IT  is  delightful  to  us  that  Puvis  de  Chavannes  should 
have  made  it  a  sort  of  point  of  honour  to  be  a  man 
of  will,  balance  and  health,  a  man  "  who  loves 
life  and  hates  dreamers."  When  the  light  of  day 
was  gone,  after  he  had  worked  furiously  all  day  in  the 
large  studio  at  Neuilly,  whither  he  walked  early  in  the 
morning  with  soldierly  regularity,  when  mercilessly 
he  had  exacted  from  himself  and  his  assistants  the 
maximum  of  work,  it  was  splendid  to  see  him  taking 
his  ease  in  careless  talk  and  frank  good  humour  at 
table,  where  his  formidable  appetite  was  the  admiration 
of  his  guests  and  the  terror  of  the  mistress  of  the  house. 
But  if  he  was  never  one  of  those  aesthetes  who  never 
take  off  their  halo  and  talk  the  more  the  less  they  work, 
if  he  loved  life  with  all  the  ardour  of  a  man  whose  senses 
sometimes  make  imperious  demands  on  him,  neverthe- 
less when  he  was  at  work,  the  bon  vivant  disappeared 
and  became  subservient  to  the  poet. 

In  his  private  life  Puvis  often  showed  that  his  heart 
was  in  the  right  place,  but  he  reserved  the  best  part  of 
his  sensibility  for  his  work.  "  The  public  is  wrong,"  he 
wrote,  "  in  imagining  the  artist  to  be  a  creature  of 
passion,  desperately  staking  his  whole  life  on  that  one 
throw.  If  he  keeps  his  balance  he  is  simply  a  creature 
of  divination ;  if  he  understands  and  controls  his  passion 
he  preserves  his  health  and  a  cool  brain.  Hugo,  Lamar- 
tine,  Delacroix,  would  have  died  in  their  prime,  if  in 
their  youth  they  had  poured  forth  all  the  tears  they 
caused  to  be  shed." 

When  the  flower  of  delicate  feeling  which  Puvis  had 

jealously  guarded  within  himself,  finally  opened  in  his 

02  35 


work,  it  was  cruel  torture  for  the  artist,  torture  to  which 
he  could  never  grow  accustomed,  to  see  it  handled 
clumsily  and  roughly. 

No  amount  of  reservations  and  concessions  could  heal 
the  wound  caused  by  appreciations  like  that  of  Casta- 
gnary  of  the  delicious  "  Esp6rance  "  which  was  con- 
ceived after  his  rejection  in  1870,  and  exhibited  in  the 
Salon  of  1872.  It  is  certainly  deliberate  in  its  naivete, 
but  it  is  exquisitely  fresh  and  graceful.  "  What  stirring 
of  the  heart  can  be  inspired  by  this  wan  little  girl  holding 
a  piece  of  grass  in  her  hand  and  sitting  opposite  a 
childishly  painted  grave  ?  What  comfort  can  be  derived 
from  seeing  this  melancholy  skinny  little  person  ?  .  .  . 
And  the  sky  and  the  stones?  The  whole  dead,  sterile 
landscape  ?  But  I  must  stop,  for  I  know  that  I  am  in 
the  presence,  perhaps  not  of  a  superior  talent,  but  of 
rare  sincerity,  and  no  man  should  wilfully  gibe  at 
"  disinterested  good  faith." 


s, 

o 
B 

ui 
o 


PLATE  XX.  CHARLES  MARTEL 

A^TER  he  had  finished    "La  Moisson"    (also 
known  as  "  L'Ete,")  which  was  exhibited  in 
1873,  bought  by  the  State,  and  sent  to  the 
Chartres  Museum,   Puvis  devoted  himself  to 
the  decoration  of  the  staircase  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  at 
Poitiers,  which  he  had  been  commissioned  to  paint  in 
1872. 

The  dates  of  the  work  were  written  in  pencil  by  the 
artist  on  a  piece  of  studio  furniture,  piously  preserved 
by  M.  Paul  Baudouin. 

"Tuesday,  August  5  (1873).  "Martel,"  first  blocked 
out  the  big  canvas;  Wednesday,  Sept.  10,  at  noon, 
began  to  paint;  Friday,  Nov.  21,  finished  it;  began 
again,  and  finished  a  second  time,  Jan.  13,  1874; 
wrote  signature  Feb.  i;  signed  the  cartoon  ("  Rade- 
gonde  ")  March  7;  signed  and  finished  September  27. ..." 
If  the  painter  had  kept  an  exact  account  of  the  days 
spent  on  the  work  he  would  have  had  to  set  down  the 
whole  of  the  calendar  on  the  little  cupboard,  for  he 
never  missed  his  work.  The  "  graffiti  "  are  evidence  of 
this,  and  that  is  why  they  are  included  here  instead  of 
certain  enthusiastic  descriptions,  such  as  that  of  M. 
Louis  Gonse,  who  in  writing  of  the  1874  Salon,  hailed 
the  picture  of  "  Charles  Martel  "  and  the  cartoon  of 
"  Sainte  Radegonde,"  listening  to  the  poet  Fortunat 
reading  in  the  cloisters  of  Sainte  Croix  at  Poitiers. 
In  spite  of  a  few  scoffers  who  dubbed  the  cartoon  "  The 
Apotheosis  of  Theophile  Gautier,"  the  two  Poitiers  pic- 
tures met  with  a  very  sympathetic  reception  in  the 
Salons  of  1874  and  1875. 

Paul    Mantz    may    be    taken    to    represent    moderate 

37 


opinion.  "  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes  is  systematic,"  he 
says.  "  He  is  incomplete;  he  eliminates  every  difficulty; 
he  is  always  beginning  sentences  and  leaving  them 
unfinished.  But  no  one  will  venture  to  say  that  he  fails 
to  interest  with  his  vast  silent  contrivances,  which  are 
hardly  paintings  at  all.  '  The  Charles  Martel  sauvant 
la  Chretient6  par  sa  Victoire  sur  les  Sarrazins  '  is  a 
significant  type  of  the  defects  and  qualities  of  this 
bizarre  inventor.  .  .  .  The  scene  takes  place  in  a  grey 
mist  behind  which  everything  loses  form  and  colour. 
The  figures  are  dreamed  rather  than  written,  ....  it  is 
very  strange  and  disputable.  I  cannot  be  enthusiastic 
about  it.  .  .  ."  However,  the  critic  does  admit  that  Puvis 
has  succeeded  in  realizing  a  very  decorative  harmony. 
"  No  more  violent  tones  in  this  picture;  everything  falls 
into  its  place;  there  are  greys  everywhere.  The  effect 
is  rather  arbitrary,  but  the  painting  is  tranquil  and 
undisturbing,  and  the  silence  of  the  colouring  makes 
it  possible  more  easily  to  hear  the  murmur  of  the 
idea." 


XX.  CHARLES  MARTEL. 


I 


PLATE  XXI.  RENCONTRE  DE  SAINTE  GENEVIEVE 
ET  DE  SAINT  GERMAIN  (THE  MEETING  OF  SAINT 
GENEVIEVE  AND  SAINT  GERMAIN) 
»•  •  -^HIS  is  the  artist's  most  popular  picture,  and 
it  best  of  all  helps  us  to  arrive  at  a  true  estima- 
tion of  the  value  of  his  art. 
As  is  well  known,  the  Pantheon,  the  heaviest 
and  most  solid  building  in  Paris,  has  changed  its  pur- 
pose as  often  as  the  country  has  changed  its  politics. 
It  was  originally  designed  to  replace  the  old  abbey 
church  of  Sainte  Genevieve,  was  then  consecrated  by 
the  "  Constituante  "  to  the  worship  of  great  men, 
became  religious  under  the  Restoration,  secular  in  1830, 
religious  in  1851,  and  once  more  secular  in  1885  on 
the  occasion  of  Victor  Hugo's  funeral. 
The  mural  decoration  was  in  1848  entrusted  to  Chena- 
vard.  Puvis's  compatriot  had  conceived,  and  in  part 
carried  out,  a  formidable  philosophical  history  of 
humanity  which  was  interrupted  by  the  events  of  1851. 
His  successor  would  have  been  not  at  all  pleased  by  an 
attempt  to  establish  a  connexion  between  their  work. 
And  yet  in  some  of  Chenavard's  cartoons  (such  as  the 
"Deluge,"  the  "She-wolf's  Children,"  the  "Cata- 
combs," and  the  "Italian  Poets"),  there  is  a  certain 
symbolism  in  conception  and  a  certain  simplification 
of  form  which  makes  the  comparison  inevitable. 
The  project  of  decorating  the  Pantheon  which  had  been 
restored  to  great  men,  was  taken  up  again  in  1874  by 
the  Director  of  Fine  Arts,  Philippe  de  Chennevieres. 
"  I  would  like  to  employ  the  remaining  group  of  the 
superb  army  (of  artists)  in  the  decoration  of  a  monu- 
ment really  worthy  of  the  name,  a  really  national 

39 


monument,"  he  wrote  in  his  report.  "  The  decoration 
of  the  Pantheon  should  be  a  vast  poem  of  painting  and 
sculpture  to  the  glory  of  Sainte  Genevieve,  who  will 
remain  the  most  ideal  figure  of  the  earliest  days  of  our 
race,  a  poem  in  which  the  legend  of  the  patron  saint 
of  Paris  should  be  combined  with  the  noble  history  of 
the  origin  of  Christianity  in  France." 
Baudry,  Joseph  Blanc,  Bonnat,  Cabanel,  J.  P.  Laurens, 
Henri  Levy,  Meissonier,  were  marked  out  for  the  work. 
Puvis  de  Chavannes,  whom  Chennevieres,  to  his  last- 
ing credit,  was  one  of  the  first  to  appreciate,  joyfully 
accepted  the  "  offer  of  the  magnificent  work  "  in  May, 
1874. 

It  took  him  four  years  to  carry  out,  years  of  great  doubt 
and  anxiety.  The  political  situation  was  very  restive, 
and  the  Director's  position  was  distinctly  weak.  The 
project  was  attacked  by  the  radicals,  who  thought  it 
too  clerical,  and  by  the  clericals,  who  thought  it  not 
religious  enough.  ..."  Sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the 
evil  thereof,"  said  Puvis,  as  he  went  on  with  his  work. 
"  Give  me  a  pair  of  blinkers  and  let  me  proceed!  " 


40 


I 


PLATE  XXII.   SAINTE   GENEVIEVE   ET   SAINT 
GERMAIN  (CENTRAL  PANEL) 

»•  •  «^HE  portion  assigned  to  Puvis  (much  enlarged 
later  on  at  the  end  of  his  life)  at  first  consisted 
of  a  long  frieze  along  which  marched  several 
tall  figures — Saint  Paterne  de  Vannes  (painted 
from  Elie  Delaunay),  Saint  Victor  de  Beauvais  (Pollet, 
the  engraver),  Saint  Trophine  d'Artes  (Philippe  de 
Chennevieres),  and  Saint  Paul  de  Narbonne  (Puvis 
himself). 

Below  the  frieze  were  four  panels  separated  by  pilasters, 
representing  scenes  of  the  childhood  of  Sainte  Genevieve. 
The  most  important  of  these  pictures  occupies  three  of 
these  panels,  and  represents  the  meeting  mentioned  in 
the  following  inscription:  "  In  the  year  429  Saint 
Germain  d'Auxerre  et  Saint  Loup,  on  their  way  to 
England  to  combat  the  heresies  of  the  Pelagians,  came 
into  the  neighbourhood  of  Nanterre.  In  the  crowd  that 
came  running  up  Saint  Germain  saw  a  girl  in  whom  he 
saw  the  divine  impress.  He  questioned  her,  and  foretold 
the  high  destiny  for  which  she  was  marked  out.  This 
girl  was  Sainte  Genevieve,  the  patron  saint  of  Paris." 
The  sketch  reproduced  in  the  foregoing  plate  represents 
the  whole  scene,  which  was  shown  in  three  cartoons  in 
the  Salon  of  1876.  The  fourth  self-contained  panel  was 
shown  with  them. 

The  voice  of  the  malcontents,  among  whom  was  Charles 
Blanc,  who  complained  of  their  religious  character, 
was  hardly  heard.  The  newspapers  and  pamphlets  of 
the  time  proclaim  a  real  triumph  for  the  artist. 
"  After  many  struggles,"  wrote  Charles  Yriarte,  "  many 
experiences,  and,  I  may  say,  much  suffering,  for  from 


the  very  beginning  we  have  all  seen  the  gaping  in- 
credulity of  the  public,  the  timid  doubts  of  the  more 
cultured,  and  the  coarse  laughter  of  the  ignorant  .  .  . 
the  artist  has  now  won  the  interest  and  esteem  of  the 
public.  .  .  .  M.  de  Chavannes  had  a  limited  audience: 
he  was  isolated  in  his  intellectual  aristocracy,  and  we 
must  all  remember  the  strange  inauguration  of  the 
frescoes  in  the  Amiens  Museum,  presided  over  by 
Th^ophile  Gautier,  while  only  a  few  of  the  initiate  were 
present.  Now,  after  a  struggle  of  many  years,  he  is  held 
in  honour,  and  his  hour  has  assuredly  come." 


42 


XXII.  SAINTE  GENEVIEVE  ET  SAINT  GERMAIN. 
(Central  Panel.) 


PLATE   XXIII.   SAINTE   GENEVIEVE   ET  SAINT 
GERMAIN  (LEFT  PANEL) 

EVEN    those    who,    like    Georges    Dufour,    still 
spoke  of  the  "  rebel  hand  "  of  Puvis,  declared 
that  he  alone  had  the  secret  of  great  painting. 
His  drawing  had  become  "firm  and  true,"  his 
colouring  "  left  nothing  to  be  desired  "  (Max  Radiguet). 
What  had  formerly  been  called  clumsiness  and  inex- 
perience was  now  called  "  simplicity,  delicious  truth, 
exquisite  naivete  "  (Victor  de  Swarte). 
Paul  de  Saint  Victor  in  "La  Presse,"  for  the  first  time 
shows  unreserved  admiration,   and  even   Paul   Mantz 
is  direct  and  almost  whole-hearted.    "  No  doubt,"  he 
said,  "  there  are  here  and  there  a  few  singularities  of 
detail,  but  the  whole  picture  is  serious,  and  will  provide 
the  church  for  which  it  is  intended  with  a  great  serene 
piece  of  decoration." 

M.  Jules  Claretie  who  as  far  back  as  1874  had  sided  with 
the  artist  was  finally  enrolled  among  his  admirers 
and  declared  that  the  picture  deserved  the  medal  of 
honour.  "  There  is  in  it,"  he  said  admirably,  "  a  feeling 
of  order,  a  poetry  of  line,  a  potent  charm  even  in  the 
severity  of  the  silhouettes  which  stand  out  against  the 
delightful  landscapes,  and  the  distant  prospects  which 
are  so  full  of  air;  there  is  so  much  light  and  sweetness 
even  in  the  empty  spaces  of  these  huge  pictures!  They 
call  to  mind  some  admirable  rounded  symphony." 
"  Truth,  simplicity,  nobility,"  said  Georges  Lafenestre, 
"  everything  that  constitutes  great  art  is  here,  and  a  man 
must  be  singularly  blind  or  obstinate  not  to  admire  these 
three  master-qualities  in  the  rare  talent  of  M.  Puvis  de  Cha- 
vannes,  who  is  now  at  the  very  zenith  of  his  powers." 

43 


We  could  go  on  making  these  quotations  for  ever,  and 
would  gladly  do  so  if  we  had  space,  for  never  was  success 
more  hardly  or  more  honestly  won  than  this.  Puvis  was 
then  over  fifty  and  we  have  seen  him  for  more  than 
fifteen  years  going  his  way  without  ever  turning  aside, 
in  spite  of  all  the  advice  given  him  and  the  sarcasm 
thrown  at  his  work.  And  even  now  he  could  not  be  sure 
that  he  had  rid  himself  of  malevolent  spectators  or  that 
they  were  not  watching  out  for  his  least  mistake. 


44 


XXIII.  SAINTE  GENEVIEVE  ET 
SAINT  GERMAIN  (Left  Panel.) 


Perhaps  it  is  not  at  first  sight  very  clear  what  the 
"  Grande  Soeur,"  here  reproduced,  has  to  do  with  the 
Pantheon.  The  little  group  is  of  a  much  earlier  date  but 
it  was  introduced  by  the  artist  into  the  "  Rencontre  de 
Sainte  Genevieve."  Nothing  could  be  more  instructive 
than  to  compare  the  whole  series  of  studies  and  sketches 
(many  of  them  now  at  Amiens)  which  led  up  from  this 
little  picture  to  the  finished  panel.  Not  only  costume 
and  colour  were  gradually  modified  to  fit  in  with  the 
whole,  but  by  degrees  the  baby  grew  heavier;  its  head  fell 
into  a  more  reposeful  position;  it  was  more  closely  held 
in  the  arms  of  the  little  mother  so  tenderly  clasping  the 
precious  burden  to  her  breast.  Puvis  is  poles  asunder 
from  the  naturalists  who  set  down  their  studies  from 
Nature  rawly  in  their  pictures,  but  it  is  clear  that  he  was 
not  boasting  when  he  said  that  his  finest  inspiration 
had  been  drawn  from  Nature. 


46 


XXIV.   LA  GRANDE  SCEUR.   (The  Elder  Sister.) 


PLATE  XXV.  L'ENFANCE  DE  SAINTE  GENEVIEVE 
(THE  CHILDHOOD  OF  SAINT  GENEVIEVE) 

A~OURTH  panel  belonging  to  this  series  is 
independent  of  the  rest.  "  From  her  earliest 
years,"  says  the  inscription,  "  Sainte  Gene- 
vieve  showed  signs  of  ardent  piety.  She  was 
for  ever  praying  and  was  the  object  of  the  surprise  and 
admiration  of  all  who  saw  her." 
The  panel  was  exhibited  in  the  Salon  of  1876. 
"  Nothing  could  be  simpler,"  wrote  Paul  Mantz.  "  A 
fresh  green  April  meadow,  and  in  the  background  a  few 
trees  beneath  which  the  child  Genevieve  is  kneeling  in 
the  fervour  of  her  instinctive  faith;  in  the  foreground 
are  two  figures,  a  labourer  and  his  wife,  sturdy  peasants 
both,  marvelling  at  the  fullness  of  this  childish  heart's 
communion  with  God.  This  simple  scene  in  such  a 
bright  setting  is  like  an  antique  idyll,  with  prayer  added, 
or,  rather,  it  is  the  springtime  of  devotion." 
"  The  conception  of  the  work,"  said  Bonnin,  "is  in 
perfect  harmony  with  the  feeling  which  inspired  it  and 
which  it  should  impress.  .  .  .  But  if  we  examine  it  further 
and  attempt  an  analysis  we  find  certain  less  striking 
defects  side  by  side  with  these  salient  qualities.  First  of 
all,  the  perspective  of  the  landscape  is  a  little  too  steep, 
an  effect  produced  by  the  disproportion  of  the  shepherd 
in  the  background.  This  figure  is  gigantic,  and  his  great 
height,  which  flatly  contradicts  the  idea  of  distance, 
brings  the  section  of  the  picture  in  which  it  is  painted 
too  near  and  makes  it  suddenly  rise  up  to  the  top  of  the 
frame.  The  kneeling  figure  of  the  saint  is  full  of  fervour 
and  impulse,  though  this  is  indicated  by  an  excessive 
simplicity  of  line.  And  also  the  painter  is  to  be  blamed 

47 


for  having  draped  it  in  too  summary  a  costume.  The 
white  linen  dress,  clothing  the  saint  from  neck  to  heel, 
is  absolutely  rudimentary  and  reminds  us  of  the  drapery 
of  that  unhappy  "  Esperance  "  whose  meagre  image  M. 
Puvis  de  Chavannes  showed  us  in  the  Salon  of  1872. 
The  group  in  the  foreground  is  the  best  part  of  the 
picture.  It  is  drawn  with  the  artist's  usual  simplicity. 
It  has  a  certain  largeness  of  outline,  full  of  freshness 
and  force,  and  a  rustic  character  which  is  very  happily 
accentuated.  .  .  .  The  feeling  for  truth  and  Nature  is 
very  striking  and  helps  the  creation  of  a  style  which 
is  neither  conventional  nor  commonplace,  never  trite, 
and  is  the  result  of  a  very  personal  interpretation  of 
the  subject." 


48 


XXV.   L'ENFANCE  DE  SAINTE  GENEVIEVE. 
(The  Childhood  of  Saint  Genevieve.) 


PLATE  XXVI.  JEUNES  FILLES  AU  BORD  DE  LA 
MER  (GIRLS  BY  THE  SEA  SHORE) 
*r  m  «^HIS  almost  unanimous  success  did  not  prevent 
discussion  when  in  the  Salon  of  1879  Puvis 
reappeared  with  the  "  Enfant  Prodigue  "  and 
the  "  Jeunes  Filles  au  Bord  de  la  Mer. 
"  In  these  two  pictures,"  wrote  Edmond  About,  "  we 
can  find  none  of  the  masterly  qualities  which  have  given 
Puvis  de  Chavannes  an  honourable  position  among 
French  decorative  painters;  they  contain  nothing  but 
his  faults  carried  to  an  extreme." 

"  One  admires  his  efforts,"  said  Huysmans,  who  was 
often  better  inspired,  "  one  would  like  to  praise  them, 
and  then — one  cannot;  in  what  country,  one  wonders, 
do  these  chlorotic  young  women  live  who  are  here 
combing  their  hair  with  a  saw  cut  out  of  flint.  Where,  in 
what  city,  in  what  country  do  these  pale  faces  exist, 
that  have  not  even  the  hectic  flush  of  phthisis  in  their 
cheeks?  One  is  simply  amazed  at  this  singular  collection 
of  girls'  faces  and  their  bodies  which  ought  to  be  im- 
prisoned in  the  black  dresses  of  pious  old  women,  living 
in  some  Balzacian  provincial  town." 
"  I  am  quite  ready  to  admit,"  wrote  Bergerat,  "  that  the 
painter  has  produced  many  pictures  as  good  as  this  and 
some  better.  But  what  astounding  poetry  there  is  here 
singing  and  murmuring  in  this  conception  that  is  beyond 
time,  beyond  life,  a  pure  fantasy,  a  chimera." 
Paul  Mantz  was  sensible  of  the  "  morbid  charm,"  which 
had  gradually  won  his  sympathy.  Victor  de  Swarte  once 
more  expressed  his  "passionate  admiration"  for  the 
artist  and  Arthur  Bagnieres  hymns  "  the  intangible 
grandeur  with  which  he  invests  all  his  work." 

E  49 


"  In  this  picture,"  wrote  Ve"ron,  "  are  to  be  found  all 
the  poetry  and  style  of  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes.  .  .  .  His 
first  endeavour  is  to  find  style  in  sweeping  lines  and 
poses,  and  then  carefully  he  selects  a  monochromatic  and 
neutral  colour-scheme  which  shall  lend  more  idealism 
to  his  design.  As  for  animating  his  figures  by  the  circula- 
tion of  the  blood,  that  is  a  dead  letter  for  the  artist, 
whose  greatest  quality  is  his  incontestable  originality, 
the  basis  of  his  success  and  future  fame,  for  it  is  not 
given  to  every  man  to  be  himself." 
"  Les  Jeunes  Filles  "  was  exhibited  subsequently  in 
many  retrospective  collections.  A  small  replica  is  now  in 
the  Louvre  with  the  Camondo  collection.  More  than 
twenty-five  sketches  with  sundry  slight  variations  show 
with  what  care  Puvis  applied  himself  to  his  search  for 
outline. 


XXVI.   JEUNES  FILLES  AU  BORD  DE   LA  MER. 
(Girls  by  the  Seashore.) 


PLATE  XXVII.  L'ENFANT  PRODIGUE  (THE  PRODI- 
GAL SON) 

NE  day,"  says  Marius  Vachon,  "  I  told 
Puvis  de  Chavannes  of  an  ingenious  hy- 
pothesis  which  had  constructed  a  trilogy 
of  Poverty  out  of  his  three  pictures:  'Le 
Pauvre  Pecheur',  '  L'Enfant  Prodigue  '  and  '  Le  Reve.' 
He  laughed  and  told  me  that  in  the  second  picture  he  had 
been  chiefly  interested  in  painting  the  pigs.  '  In  1878  ' 
(the  painter  explained),  '  I  was  staying  with  my  family 
in  the  country,  and  the  farmer  had  been  marvellously 
successful  with  his  pigs  that  year ;  he  had  a  great  number, 
and  all  splendid  beasts;  I  spent  a  great  part  of  the  day 
in  running  after  them  and  making  sketches.  I  wanted 
to  make  use  of  them  and  what  better  subject  could  I 
have  than  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son?  '  " 
It  would  perhaps  be  rash  to  take  the  story  literally. 
Puvis  de  Chavannes  was  too  modest  in  feeling  to  care  to 
see  his  sentiments  translated  in  the  language  of  the 
aesthetes.  He  rather  preferred  to  give  the  idea  that  his 
only  guide  in  the  conception  of  a  picture  which  so 
subtly  moves  our  inmost  feelings  was  his  desire  to  use 
one  of  his  sketches.  Perhaps  he  believed  it  himself. 
And  yet  it  is  hard  to  admit  that  he  could  have  so  expressed 
the  wretchedness  of  the  Prodigal  Son  with  no  other 
ambition  before  him  save  that  of  "  painting  pigs." 
They  are  good  to  look  at,  burrowing  with  their  snouts 
in  the  ground,  but  they  only  occupy  a  minor  position 
in  this  sorrowful  poem  of  degradation,  isolation  and 
repentance. 

In  the  Salon  of  1879  "  L'Enfant  Prodigue  "  met  with  a 

doubtful  reception.  "One  admires  the  artist's  efforts," 

£2  51 


wrote  Huysmans,  "  one  would  like  to  praise  them,  and 
then — one  cannot.  .  .  .  Still  the  same  pale  colouring, 
the  same  fresco  appearance ;  still  angular  and  hard,  and 
as  usual  one  is  chilled  by  the  man's  pretentious  nalvet£ 
and  affected  simplicity,  and  yet,  though  he  be  incomplete, 
this  painter  has  talent.  .  .  .  Though  he  is  up  to  his  neck 
in  a  false  medium,  he  struggles  bravely,  and  even 
attains  a  certain  greatness  in  this  pointless  struggle." 


XXVII.   L'ENFANT  PRODIGUE.   (The  Prodigal  Son.) 


PLATE  XXVIII.  LE  PAUVRE  PECHEUR  (THE  POOR 
FISHERMAN) 

A~)ISMAL    landscape   seen    near   Honfleur — an 
immense  stretch  of  water  under  a  dull  sky — 
gave  Puvis  the  idea  of  his  "  Pauvre  Pecheur," 
exhibited  in  the  Salon  of  1881.  The  painter, 
who  was  very  sensitive  to  criticism,  was  "  roasted." 
The  memory  of  this  experience  remained  so  vividly  with 
him  that  he  was  almost  sorry  when  later  on  the  picture 
was  bought  for  the  Luxembourg. 

" '  Le  Pauvre  Pecheur,'"  said  Auguste  Balluffe,  "is  a 
declaration  of  principle.  .  .  .  This  fisherman  is  neither 
flesh  nor  fish.  He  fills  the  centre  of  the  simulacrum  of  a 
picture,  in  a  hint  of  a  boat,  drifting  down  a  non-existent 
river.  Really,  to  give  the  thing  its  right  name,  it  is  nothing 
but  a  shorthand  note  of  a  sketch." 

Edmond  About,  with  many  expressions  of  deference, 
declared  that  the  artist  was  qualified  to  carry  out  the 
classic  task  of  the  studios — to  illustrate  the  verse  of 
Racine  which  represents  Hippolytus  without  form  or 
colour.  "  The  poor  fisherman  and  his  poor  wife  and  his 
poor  child,  as  best  they  can,  fulfil  the  conditions  imposed 
on  them.  I  bow  and  pass  on,  and  nothing  will  induce 
me  to  go  back." 

"  It  is  a  crepuscular  picture,"  said  Huysmans,  "  an 
old  fresco,  faded  by  the  light  of  the  moon,  and  washed 
away  by  the  rain.  It  is  painted  in  lilac  that  is  nearly 
white,  green  mixed  with  milk,  and  pale  grey.  It  is  dry, 
hard,  and,  as  usual,  of  an  affected  naive  stiffness.  I 
shrug  my  shoulders  at  the  picture,  and  am  horrified  by 
this  travesty  of  Biblical  grandeur  .  .  .  ;  then  in  spite  of 
it  all  I  feel  a  certain  pity  and  indulgence,  for  it  is  the 

53 


work  of  a  pervert,  but  it  is  also  the  work  of  a  sincere 
artist  who  despises  the  approbation  of  the  public.  .  .  . 
In  spite  of  the  disgust  with  which  the  picture  fills  me 
when  I  see  it,  I  cannot  help  feeling  a  certain  attraction 
when  I  am  away  from  it." 

Paul  Mantz  consented  to  study  the  picture  "  on  condi- 
tion that  the  French  school  will  look  at  it  twice  before 
adopting  the  new  formula.  ...  It  is  a  Good  Friday 
picture.  All  the  artists'  colourmen  have  closed  their 
shops;  there  is  no  more  blue  in  the  sky,  no  more  green 
in  the  fields;  the  Lent  fast  has  become  cruel,  even  men's 
eyes  are  forbidden  their  fare.  .  .  .  The  river's  bank  is 
lifeless  earth,  with  here  and  there  a  few  yellow  flowers. 
A  very  thin  girl  is  gathering  a  bunch  of  them,  though 
they  will  have  no  scent.  .  .  .  The  sky  is  pale,  the  water 
colourless,  and  the  horizon  against  which  the  fisherman 
stands  sharply  and  sorrowfully  outlined,  seems  to  fit 
in  exactly  with  his  melancholy  thoughts.  .  .  .  And  mark 
how  complicated  and  sometimes  contradictory  are  the 
things  of  art;  this  picture,  which  hardly  exists,  is 
singularly  expressive;  there  is  a  sorrowful  note  in  the 
mist,  an  emotion  in  the  void.  Amid  the  desolation  of  the 
surrounding  landscape,  the  fisherman  is  a  striking  figure 
of  nakedness,  surrender,  irremediable  wretchedness!  " 


54 


PLATE  XXIX.  JEUNES  PICARDS  S'EXER(JANT  A  LA 
LANCE  (YOUNG  PICARDIANS  PRACTISING  THE 
JAVELIN) 


1 


»    •    »^HE   principal   part  of  the  decoration  of  the 
staircase  of  the  Amiens  Museum  was  still  left 


to  be  done.  A  great  bare  wall  stared  the 
"  Ave  Picardia  Nutrix  "  in  the  face,  between 
"  Le  Repos  "  and  "  Le  Travail."  The  municipality  were 
very  anxious  for  Puvis  to  finish  the  work,  but  the  State 
refused  its  support. 

The  artist  had  to  undertake  the  cartoon  at  his  own  risk. 
It  was  exhibited  in  1880. 

"  The  Salon  which  contains  such  an  admirable  picture," 
cried  Chennevieres,  "  is  not  an  ordinary  Salon.  The 
artist  who,  in  the  creation  of  this  immense  picture, 
conceived  the  whole  poem  of  primitive  Picardy,  with 
its  scanty  woods  and  the  vast  solitudes  of  its  bogs,  its 
superb  groups  of  young  javelin-throwers,  as  splendid 
in  their  noble  attitudes  as  the  athletes  of  ancient  Greece, 
its  old  swan  and  heron  hunters  as  wild  in  mien  as  their 
prey,  its  groups  of  beautiful  girls  and  children  finding 
relaxation  from  their  rustic  cares  near  the  huts  of  the 
tribe — the  artist  who  expresses  the  things  of  the  ideal 
life  with  such  grandiose  simplicity  and  such  instinctive 
and  profoundly  just  observation  of  the  essentials  of 
nature  in  human  actions  and  habits  is  really  the  product 
of  a  great  age,  and  I  absolutely  ignore  the  defects  which 
others  find  in  him,  for  if  I  found  in  him  the  vulgar 
tricks  which  pedants  regret,  he  would  not  be  the  seeker 
after  supreme  poetry,  the  amazing  Georgic,  whose 
virile  sobriety  is  so  full  of  harmony,  who  charms  and 
delights  me  to  my  very  depths.  And  to  think  that  such 

55 


a  man,  a  man  of  such  extraordinary  worth,  because  he 
is  himself  and  lives  on  the  heights,  is  reduced  to  filling 
the  leisure  which  is  forced  on  him  in  his  maturity, 
after  his  huge  and  admirable  pictures  in  the  Amiens 
Museum,  after  the  pictures  in  the  Marseilles  Museum, 
after  the  frescoes  in  Saint  Genevieve,  after  his  accla- 
mation by  every  artist,  and  has  to  undertake  at  his  own 
risk  the  "  Lanceurs  de  Pique  "  which  he  planned  for 
the  completion  of  his  decoration  of  the  staircase  at 
Amiens!  Are  there  so  many  Puvis  de  Chavannes  in 
France!  And  has  the  Louvre  no  monumental  stair- 
cases, and  has  the  Hotel  de  Ville  none  to  hand  which 
could  be  turned  over  to  the  rare  good  fortune  of  being 
utilized  by  this  incomparable  decorator?  " 


PLATE  XXX.  LUDUS  PRO  PATRIA 

CHENNEVIERE'S  appeal  awoke  a  response. 
After  the  success  of  the  cartoon  the  State 
decided  to  buy  the  picture  to  complete  the 
decoration  of  the  Amiens  Museum. 
When  it  was  completed  it  was  exhibited  in  the  Salon 
of  1882  under  the  title  "  Ludus  pro  Patria." 
"  It  is  a  plain  in  Picardy,"  wrote  Henry  Houssaye, 
"  stretching  vast  and  flat  away  to  the  Louzon,  broken 
on  one  side  with  the  bluish  outskirts  of  a  forest.  .  .  . 
In  the  centre  are  a  few  young  men,  nude,  practising 
javelin-throwing  against  the  trunk  of  a  dead  tree.  .  .  . 
On  the  right,  standing  in  front  of  the  Gaulish  huts, 
old  men  and  children  are  watching  the  trial  of  strength 
and  skill,  while  the  women  are  looking  after  the  evening 
meal.  Some  are  drawing  water ;  others  are  baking  bread ; 
others  are  talking.  The  left  part  of  the  picture  is  filled 
with  a  grassy  plot,  on  which  are  sitting  a  few  young 
women,  one  playing  with  her  child,  another  suckling 
her  baby.  A  man  is  bending  down  to  kiss  his  son,  and 
the  boy  is  responding  to  his  caresses  by  pulling  his 
beard.  ...  In  considering  such  a  piece  of  work  .... 
it  were  bad  taste  to  stop  to  criticize  the  details.  One  can 
only  yield  to  a  frank,  healthy  admiration." 
Even  now  there  were  a  few  implacable  detractors. 
But,  generally  speaking,  the  picture  was  received  with 
the  respect  it  deserved.  M.  Andre  Michel,  who  had 
already  written  at  length  about  the  sketch  of  the  pre- 
ceding year,  now  devoted  the  whole  of  his  first  article 
on  the  Salon  to  the  artist. 

"  Only  one  man,"  he  said,  "  has  been  'worthy  of  him- 
self '  in  a  picture  which  we  may,  with  justifiable  pride, 

57 


leave  to  posterity.  We  have  written  his  name  at  the 
head  of  this  article,  for  we  wished  to  dedicate  the 
whole  Salon  to  him.  He  dominates  it  from  a  great 
height." 

The  general  conclusion  was  that  the  name  of  Puvis 
de  Chavannes  was  marked  out  for  the  medal  of  honour. 
And  this  was  the  opinion  of  the  most  difficult  judges  to 
convince — the  painter's  colleagues. 

In  considering  the  "  Ludus  "  we  may  note  a  story  very 
characteristic  of  Puvis's  methods.  When  M.  Vachon 
asked  him  if  he  had  seen  and  studied  the  beautiful 
landscape  of  his  picture,  the  painter  replied  with  a 
smile:  "  I  saw  the  landscape  through  a  railway  carriage 
window  during  one  of  my  many  journeys  to  Amiens.  .  .  . 
My  vision  of  it  was  so  intense  that  it  seemed  to  me  that 
local  observation  would  have  weakened  my  sensations 
and  would  have  left  me  with  a  reduced,  blurred,  and 
lifeless  image  of  it." 


PLATE  XXXI.  DOUX  PAYS  (LAND  OF  TENDERNESS) 

IN  the  Salon  of  1882  there  was  also  exhibited  a 
smaller  picture,  which  seems  to  us  now  as  beautiful 
as  any.  This  was  the  "  Doux  Pays,"  destined  by 
the  painter  for  the  walls  of  the  house  of  his  friend 
and  colleague  Leon  Bonnat. 

Thirty  years  ago  "  Le  Parlement  "  published  a  descrip- 
tion of  it,  which  the  writer  has  perhaps  forgotten, 
though  the  reader  will  certainly  share  our  pleasure  in  it. 
"  On  a  beach,"  said  M.  Andre  Michel,  "  is  a  group  of 
three  women,  two  sitting,  the  third  standing  with  her 
arm  leaning  on  the  branch  of  a  fig-tree;  further  off, 
down  the  slope,  is  an  orange  grove  with  its  thick  foliage 
speckled  with  fruit ;  then  comes  the  blue  sea,  and  on  the 
horizon  a  line  of  hills  covered  with  purple  mists.  Children 
are  playing  on  the  shore;  a  female  figure  clothed  in 
white  is  standing  in  the  foreground,  vaguely  gazing. 
In  the  distance  fishermen  are  drawing  in  their  nets; 
white  sails  pass,  gently  billowing,  over  the  silent  sea. 
A  divine  serenity  descends  from  the  sky,  where,  in  the 
golden  paleness,  skim  lilac-tinted  clouds.  The  landscape 
is  grand  and  gentle.  One  floats  in  it  as  in  a  happy  dream ; 
one  cannot  tear  oneself  away  from  it.  The  memory  of 
the  enchanted  hours,  when  with  calm  and  noble  delight, 
one  tasted  the  sweetness  of  living  and  believed  in  happi- 
ness with  no  hereafter,  and  joys  without  bitterness, 
and  built  up  anew  the  lovely  pagan  dream,  sweetly  fills 
one's  heart.  It  is  an  enchantment;  all  thought  of  analysis, 
of  explanation,  of  criticism,  is  gone;  one  tastes  the 
supreme  happiness  of  surrendering  to  the  immediate 
impression,  and  marvelling  '  like  a  beast.' 

"  Let  us,  however,  consider  the  means  by  which  the 

59 


painter  has  given  us  such  delight.  Very  simple,  tranquil 
lines,  with  hardly  a  curve;  very  simple  attitudes;  the 
two  women  lying  down  are  clothed  in  pale  blue  and 
tobacco-coloured  tunics;  those  standing  up  are  in  white; 
the  draperies  are  very  soberly  and  broadly  treated;  the 
design  is  deliberately  simplified  and  synthetized,  the 
modelling  is  very  summary.  In  one  corner  is  a  branch 
of  rose-laurel  in  flower;  near  the  women  is  a  basket  of 
oranges;  a  red  flower  is  deliciously  poised  in  one  woman's 
brown  hair;  that  is  all.  Nothing  disturbs  the  sovereign 
harmony  of  the  whole;  no  detail  strikes  a  false  note; 
a  soft  silvery  atmosphere  carelessly  envelops  sea, 
shore  and  sky.  It  is  a  universal  andante,  naively  grave 
and  profoundly  sweet.  It  is  impossible  more  happily 
to  combine  freshness  and  sincerity  of  inspiration  with 
will-power,  more  surely  to  attain  great  art,  not  by  vain 
school  formulae,  but  by  free  interpretation  of  Nature, 
whose  forms  and  combinations  the  artist  has  systematic- 
ally modified  in  order  to  translate  into  a  language  of 
which  he  is  inventor  and  master  the  delights  of  his 
most  inward  dream." 


60 


PLATE  XXXII.  LE  REVE  (THE  DREAM) 

IN  the  Salon  of  1883  were  exhibited  the  portrait  of 
Mme  M  .  .  .  C  .  .  .,  which  we  shall  consider  later, 
and  "  Le  Reve,"  which  had  this  note  against  it 
in  the  catalogue:  "  He  sees  in  his  sleep  Love, 
Glory  and  Riches  appearing." 

About  abandoned  irony  and  waxed  wrath  and  wrote 
a  furious  and  often  quoted  article: 
"  When  Hell  wants  its  roads  mending  like  the  Champs 
Elys£es,  no  doubt  it  will  entrust  the  undertaking  to 
M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes.  This  artist  is,  above  all,  a  man 
of  good  intentions,  one  might  even  say  of  great  inten- 
tions and  vast  ideas.  For  the  last  twenty  years  he  has 
been  promising  himself  and  us  a  masterpiece  which 
he  will  never  carry  out;  for  he  can  neither  paint  nor 
draw,  and  he  is  perpetually  parading  his  encyclopaedic 
ignorance  in  every  corner  of  the  realm  of  art.  There  is, 
unhappily,  no  means  of  supplying  his  lack  of  early 
training;  neither  courage,  nor  perseverance,  nor  even 
a  certain  elevation  of  mind  can  help  the  dreamer  who 
has  never  been  to  an  elementary  school,  never  had  the 
faintest  notion  of  prosody,  or  even  of  common  spelling 
to  produce  an  epic  poem  in  twelve  cantos." 
And  in  a  final  effort  to  arrest  the  growing  fame  of  his 
former  friend,  the  faithful  champion  of  Baudry  went  on 
in  these  terms: 

"  The  two  pictures  which  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes  is 
exhibiting  this  year  with  a  negative  success  are  not  in- 
ferior in  craftsmanship  to  those  huge  contrivances  which 
kindly  criticism  has  called  masterpieces  and  the  incom- 
petence of  the  Government  has  rewarded  out  of  all 
proportion.  '  Le  Reve  '  and  '  Le  Portrait '  are  the  pro- 

61 


ducts  of  an  art  so  childish,  that,  but  for  the  artist's 
signature  the  most  lenient  jury  would  have  rejected 
them.  Any  young  man  who  could  paint  that  lugubrious 
dummy  with  those  three  grotesque  dolls,  any  child  who 
could  model  a  face  and  hands  like  those  of  Mme  M  .  .  .  . 
C  .  .  .  .  and  the  black  drapery  daubed  in  with  a  blacking- 
brush,  would  never  be  allowed  inside  the  Ecole  des  Beaux 
Arts,  or  even  the  school  in  the  Avenue  Trudaine.  But 
you  will  see  that  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes's  champions 
will  not  consider  themselves  beaten,  and  will  go  on 
bolstering  up  this  great  intentionist  as  a  master;  that 
they  will  lasso  pupils  and  imitators  for  him  and  will 
lead  him  in  triumph  to  the  very  doors  of  the  '  Institut.' 
When  that  day  comes  there  will  be  only  one  thing  to  do 
to  celebrate  it — soak  all  the  pictures  in  the  Louvre  in 
saltpetre  and  turn  them  into  torches." 


62 


PLATE  XXXIII.  ORPHEE  (ORPHEUS) 
*  •  -^HE  same  date,  1883,  is  inscribed  on  a  picture 
which  we  should  much  like  to  pass  over  without 
comment:  it  has  no  history  and  its  subject  is 
JL  one  of  those  which  the  artist  disliked  to  see 
embellished  with  words.  However,  we  must  stop  to  con- 
sider it  since  there  is  a  certain  tendency — backed  up 
by  Puvis  himself — to  substitute  for  the  old  conception 
of  him  as  an  anaemic  and  vague  artist,  the  portrait  of  him 
as  a  "bon  vivant"  and  "rude  Burgundian,"  which  is 
almost  equally  false  in  its  incompleteness. 
Our  painter's  work  and  life  were  anything  but  those  of  a 
weakly  man.  And  yet  it  is  not  untrue  to  say,  that  in  spite 
of  his  energy  and  vigour,  he  did  not  escape  the  disease 
of  the  century,  when  we  consider  his  confession,  at  the 
beginning  and  end  of  his  career,  that  the  melancholy 
with  which  his  most  serene  pictures  are  tempered  was 
deeply  rooted  in  his  soul. 

"  The  Musset  and  Senancour  contagion  does  not  count 
for  nothing  in  my  work,"  he  wrote  in  1861  to  Mme 
Nicolas  Belby.  "  I  am  like  that,  and  so  melancholy  that 
the  sun  tires  my  eyes  and  troubles  my  soul,  especially 
the  autumn  sun,  which  shines  so  persistently  and  gives  so 
little  warmth.  .  .  . 

"  And  then  who  is  there  in  this  world  that  has  not  a  past  ? 
And  is  it  not  always  sad,  since  it  is  past? 
"Here  are  three  beautiful  lines: 

'  Nature,  serene  of  brow,  how  you  forget ! 
How  in  your  ceaseless  changes  you  still  destroy 
The  mysterious  threads  that   bind   our   hearts  to- 
gether.' 

"  Hugo  said  that,  and  sometimes  they  make  me  cry. 

63 


Things  that  are  implacably  beautiful  are  for  men  more 
finely  tempered  than  I." 

And  thirty  years  later,  in  1894,  he  confessed:  "  These 
sudden  signs  of  autumn  make  me  infinitely  sad.  Never 
has  life  appeared  so  dream-like  as  to-day.  The  year  is 
already  going  down  to  its  death  and  it  seems  to  have 
existed  for  me  only  in  a  few  days  here  and  there.  If  I 
had  not  material  proof  in  my  work  that  it  has  had  its 
proper  number  of  days  and  hours  I  should  doubt  whether 
I  had  lived  it.  Such  a  sensation  is  incomprehensible  to  the 
young,  but  at  my  age  it  is  brutal  and  merciless." 
Very  rarely,  even  among  his  intimates,  did  Puvis  let 
such  a  cry  of  despair  and  agony  escape  him  as  is  here 
expressed  in  his  "  Orpheus,"  and  it  was  as  well.  But 
a  few  table  anecdotes  Gallically  salted  no  more  convey 
a  portrait  of  the  man  than  his  albums  of  caricatures 
— often  very  amusing — give  any  idea  of  his  work. 


64 


PLATE  XXXIV.   MARIE  CANTACUZENE 

PUVIS  was  still  unknown  when  at  the  house  of 
Theodore  Chasseriau  he  met  the  woman  who 
was  to  be  his  life-long  friend. 
Merely  to  feel  the  emotion  roused  in  those  who 
knew  her  by  the  name  of  Princesse  Cantacuzene  is  to 
renounce  any  attempt  to  draw  a  worthy  portrait  of  her. 
An  exquisite  pencil  drawing  by  Chasseriau  (1855)  and 
Puvis's  admirable  masterpiece  (painted  and  exhibited  in 
1883  and  again  in  1889  and  now  in  the  Lyons  Museum) 
make  it  superfluous  to  say  anything  of  her  noble  simplicity, 
her  lofty  intelligence  and  greatness  of  heart.  Her  whole 
life  was   one   of   self-effacement   and   self-abnegation. 
"  You  go  to  see  her  to  console  her,"  said  Cazin,  "  and  it 
is  she  who  consoles  you." 

She  was  a  little  older  than  Puvis  and  gave  him  a  passion- 
ate unswerving  affection,  capable  of  every  sacrifice 
which  her  friend's  ardent  temperament  might  demand. 
There  was  only  one  woman  in  the  world  capable  of  such 
constant  self-renunciation  to  the  life  of  an  artist  which 
was  mercilessly  subordinated  to  his  work. 
When  she  had  helped,  both  actively  and  by  her  discreet 
sympathy  and  confidence,  in  the  conception  of  a  new 
picture,  and  when  some  of  her  expressive  attitudes  and 
beautiful  grave  features  had  become  a  part  of  it,  she 
would  be  moved  to  tears  when  Puvis  made  her  share 
the  praises  of  their  friends. 

It  was  only  very  late  in  the  day  that  circumstances 
allowed  the  artist  to  give  the  Princess  his  name.  He  had 
the  great  sorrow  of  seeing  her  depart  this  life  before  him. 
"  What  shall  I  say  of  my  poor  sick  wife?  "  he  wrote  in 
August,  1898.  "  Her  life  is  ebbing  away  from  day  to  day, 
F  65 


hour  by  hour,  drop  by  drop.  I  never  leave  the  house:  I 
must  be  there  for  her  to  see  me — for  she  is  so  weak  that 
she  cannot  speak  to  me." 

And  a  few  days  later:  "  Sorrowful  nights  are  followed 
by  sorrowful  days,  during  which  with  my  soul  at  stretch 
I  watch  the  passing  of  my  remaining  life.  It  is  better  so — 
I  prefer  to  suffer  alone." 

Puvis  only  survived  her  by  two  months.  The  brush  fell 
from  his  hands  as  he  finished  the  picture  in  which  the 
features  of  Mme  Puvis  de  Chavannes  are  glorified,  the 
picture  in  which  his  devotion  and  "  pious  solicitude  " 
are  so  touchingly  incarnate:  "  Sainte  Genevieve  veillant 
sur  la  Ville  endormie." 


66 


XXXIV.  MARIE  CANTACUZENE. 


PLATE  XXXV.  LE  BOIS  SACRE  (THE  HOLY  WOOD) 

ON  the  initiative  of  the  Administrative  Com- 
mittee of  Museums,  Puvis  was  commissioned 
in  1883  to  paint  a  series  of  pictures  for  the 
staircase  of  the  Palais  des  Arts  at  Lyons. 
The  first  picture  of  this  series,  the  largest  and  most 
powerfully  conceived  perhaps  that  Puvis  ever  painted, 
was  shown  in  the  Salon  of  1884  with  the  title:  "  Le  Bois 
Sacre  cher  aux  Arts  et  aux  Muses." 
The  two  outside  portions  are  unfortunately  gone.  It  is 
perhaps  the  only  instance  of  a  picture  by  the  artist 
losing  by  being  hung  in  its  destined  position.  And  it  is 
all  the  more  regrettable  inasmuch  as  his  contemporaries 
have  preserved  an  unforgettable  memory  of  their  first 
impression. 

"  A  great  lake,"  wrote  M.  Andre  Michel,  "  reflects  a 
golden  sky  only,  a  thin  strip  of  which  is  shown  above 
a  line  of  mountains,  purple-blue,  on  the  horizon. 
Between  these  two  colours,  the  blue  of  the  mountains 
and  the  golden  water  of  the  lake,  are  gently  sloping 
meadows  starred  with  rare  flowers,  yellow  and  white 
narcissus,  and  trees  with  straight  slender  trunks,  pines, 
oaks  and  laurels ;  lower  down  in  the  valley  is  the  whisper- 
ing and  dying  murmur  of  the  darker  leaves  of  a  dense 
wood. ...  A  sweet  all-pervading  harmony  slowly  reaches 
you  and  the  figures  who  inhabit  these  dream  regions 
then  seem  like  gladly  expected  guests.  .  .  .  They  are 
born  for  contemplation  and  dreams.  Nothing  vulgar  or 
base  can  enter  this  happy  retreat  where  noble,  manly, 
and  serene  thoughts  seem  to  hover  in  the  air.  It  gives 
an  incommunicable  impression;  a  mysterious  sense  of 
satisfaction  fills  the  landscape  with  sweet  solemnity. 
F2  67 


Only  a  poet  could  have  dreamed  this  dream  and  painted 
it."  After  noticing  a  few  doubtful  details,  the  writer 
adds:  "  But  the  whole  impression  is  so  strong  and  so 
gently  persuasive  that  the  desire  to  criticize  grows  less 
the  more  one  looks  at  it  and  one  begins  to  wonder 
whether  it  would  not  break  the  spell  if  a  single  detail 
was  changed  in  the  wonderful  whole,  which  is  so 
systematically  contrived,  so  wonderfully  balanced,  that 
every  note  in  it  answers  to  all  the  rest  and  rings  out  in  an 
all-penetrating  harmony.  ..." 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  quote  the  pages  of  MM.  Geoffroy, 
Roger  Marx,  Marius  Vachon,  Henry  Houssaye,  Aignard, 
to  show  how  after  the  misunderstandings  of  the  first 
few  years  all  the  connoisseurs  came  to  respond  to  the 
artist's  emotions.  Even  those  who,  like  M.  de  Fourcand, 
would  have  preferred  a  more  national  subject  to  such  a 
classical  theme,  something  more  impregnated  with 
humanity  and  reality,  like  the  "  Sainte  Genevieve," 
were  won  over  by  the  brilliant  harmony  of  colour  and 
the  "  indefinable  feeling  of  rest  and  freshness." 
To  these  M.  Peladan  retorts  that  by  treating  a  hackneyed 
subject  without  having  recourse  to  the  antique  or  to 
the  primitives  Puvis  had  given  the  exact  measure  of  his 
originality.  "  When  one  compares,"  he  says  "  the  '  Bois 
Sacre  '  with  all  the  other  exhibits,  one  is  forced  unre- 
servedly to  proclaim  Puvis  de  Chavannes  the  greatest 
master  of  our  time." 


68 


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X 
X 


PLATE   XXXVI.   VISION   ANTIQUE  (A  VISION    OF 
ANCIENT  DAYS) 

"  ~W~  E  Bois  Sacre  cher  aux  Arts  et  aux  Muses," 
explained  Puvis  in  the  catalogue  of  1886, 
"  was  the  germ  of  two  other  pictures,  '  Vision 
M  dr  Antique  '  and  '  Inspiration  Chretienne,'  art 
being  comprised  within  these  two  terms,  of  which  the 
first  evokes  the  idea  of  Form  and  the  other  the  idea  of 
Feeling.  A  fourth  panel  represents  '  Le  Rhone  et  la 
Saone,'  symbolizing  Force  and  Grace." 
In  his  pictures  in  the  Lyons  Museum  therefore  the  artist 
summed  up  his  conception  of  art.  But  that  criticism 
has  been  bandying  the  word  for  the  last  twenty  years 
one  might  say  that  these  four  pictures  are  eminently 
synthetic.  In  a  few  precious  lines  expressing  his 
intentions  Puvis  admits  us  to  his  ideas,  as  sober  as  they 
are  lofty  and  broad,  and  as  far  removed  from  literary 
complication  as  from  literal  naturalism.  They  are  the 
ideas  of  an  artist  and  not  those  of  a  philosopher  gone 
astray. 

Neither  are  they  so  remote  as  the  catalogue  might  lead 
us  to  suppose  with  its  antithesis  of  Form  and  Feeling. 
Like  its  neighbours  the  "  Vision  Antique  "  has  the 
usual  colouring  of  Puvis's  dreams. 
"  La  Vision  Antique,"  writes  M.  G.  Geoff roy,  "  is  the 
appearance  in  a  very  limited  landscape  veiled  by  the 
mist  of  a  hot  day,  of  the  rhythmic  poetry  and  the  heroic 
movements  of  ancient  Greece.  The  earth  is  everywhere 
pierced  by  rock;  flowers  and  little  shrubs  are  growing 
in  the  crannies;  a  temple  of  very  beautiful  proportions 
is  built  on  a  summit;  a  blue  sea  washes  the  shores  and 
the  sunlit  promontories.  With  extraordinary  sureness 

69 


of  brushwork,  and  an  amazing  juxtaposition  of  simple 
tones,  the  background,  the  distances,  the  contours  and 
the  very  texture  of  the  stones  are  shown  in  a  free  air 
in  which  the  eyes  of  the  spectator  can  roam  at  will, 
come  and  go,  stop  and  get  lost.  Along  the  shore  of  the 
Ionian  Sea  a  troop  of  armed  horsemen  go  galloping  by, 
galloping  rhythmically  like  the  horses  and  men  of  the 
frieze  of  the  Parthenon.  .  .  .  The  women  in  the  fore- 
ground are  not  such  evident  proof  of  an  understanding 
of  antiquity;  they  have  the  attitudes  of  Greece  and  the 
rigid  features  of  the  statues,  but  in  this  joyous  place 
they  seem  to  be  living  isolated  and  unhappy  existences. 
They  are  lying  on  the  ground,  or  standing  with  their 
heads  in  their  hands;  they  are  weary  and  filled  with 
lassitude;  their  sad  eyes  are  wandering  vaguely  as 
they  dream." 


70 


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PLATE   XXXVII.    INSPIRATION   CHRETIENNE 
(CHRISTIAN  INSPIRATION) 

"  "W"  "1TNDER  the  arches  of  a  romanesque  cloister," 
I  wrote  M.  Ponsonailhe  in  1886,  "  M.  Puvis 
J  de  Chavannes  has  painted  the  antithesis  of 
^^->^  the  '  Vision  Antique  ' ;  '  L'Inspiration  Chre- 
tienne,'  that  other  source  of  modern  art,  of  the  art 
of  all  time  with  regard  to  sentiment.  The  last  light  of 
the  day  tinges  the  cloisters  where  a  painter-monk  is 
decorating  the  walls.  We  can  see  a  fragment  of  his  pious 
work.  It  is  a  Christ  in  the  garden  of  olives  .  .  .  gently 
rejecting  the  chalice  of  gall  born  by  three  cherubim; 
on  one  side  the  beginning  of  a  procession  of  the  blessed 
saints  with  golden  haloes.  ...  At  the  foot  of  the  ladder 
leading  to  the  scaffolding  the  religious  painter  is  moving 
forward,  brush  in  hand,  lost  in  dreams.  ...  A  few  clerks, 
and  a  few  laymen  have  become  his  pupils.  ...  In  the 
foreground  a  boy  is  looking  for  some  drawings  in  a 
portfolio.  He  is  kneeling  near  a  bench  on  which  is  a  lily, 
emblematic  flower  of  the  gardens  of  Sharon,  the  white 
petals  of  which  were  made  by  God  himself.  On  the  opposite 
side  of  the  picture  are  three  monks  in  white  gowns  and 
black  woollen  hoods.  .  .  .  The  background  of  the  picture 
is  a  court  the  gate  of  which  is  open  to  a  few  beggars: 
an  old  man  is  having  his  wounds  tended  by  a  monk  .  .  .  ; 
a  woman  is  receiving  alms  and  a  child  is  held  in  the 
arms  of  a  monk.  .  .  . 

"  The  wall  of  the  cloister  is  not  so  high  as  altogether  to 
conceal  the  country  outside.  But  this  glimpse  of  the 
world  outside  is  not  such  as  to  stop  prayers  on  pious  lips. 
A  cemetery,  sad  and  austere,  is  on  the  slope  of  a  hill. 
A  few  cypress  trees  rear  their  spears  of  an  unchanging 


green.  Beyond  are  arid  lofty  mountains,  ...  a  dull  green 
sky  silvered  by  the  pale  crescent  moon.  Thus  nothing 
can  disturb  the  peace  of  soul  sought  in  the  monastery 
by  its  inmates,  or  the  oblivion  of  the  past  and  the  con- 
templation of  the  future  which  is  the  aim  of  monastic 
life.  Should  the  painter's  eyes  wander  from  his  inward 
vision,  .  .  .  and  turn  to  the  country,  its  cypress  trees, 
straight  as  the  mystic  candles  of  the  altar  will  make  him 
think  of  the  graves  at  their  feet.  ..." 
Among  the  principal  characters,  whose  description  we 
have  had  to  curtail,  we  must  remark  the  pupil  leaning 
against  the  wall,  to  whom  Puvis  gave  the  features  of  his 
compatriot  Flandrin. 

A  reduced  replica,  here  reproduced,  was,  as  in  many 
other  cases,  commissioned  by  M.  Durand-Ruel.  A  little 
preliminary  sketch,  now  in  the  possession  of  M.  Paul 
Baudouin,  deserves  to  be  as  well  known  as  the  finished 
picture,  for  it  contains  all  its  delicate  sensitiveness  of 
vision  and  sentiment. 


72 


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I 


PLATE  XXXVIII.  LE  RHONE  ET  LA  SAONE 
*>  •  ^HIS  picture  was  exhibited  with  the  two  pre- 
ceding panels  in  the  Salon  of  1886  and  is  now 
over  the  entrance  door  of  the  Fine  Arts  Gallery 
in  the  Lyons  Museum. 
"  It  represents,"  says  Alfred  de  Lostalot,  "  the  con- 
fluence of  the  Rhone  and  the  Saone  in  an  ideal  landscape, 
very  markedly  French  in  character,  and  of  an  irresistible 
charm.  Two  nude  figures,  substantial  in  form  this  time 
and  very  near  natural  truth,  are  in  the  foreground; 
they  are  allegorical  of  the  Rhone  and  the  Saone  but  the 
catalogue  tells  us  that  we  are  to  take  them  also  to  mean 
Force  and  Grace.  We  do  not  contradict  that." 
As  A.  de  Lostalot  remarked,  the  picture  is  more  strongly 
natural  in  tone  than  usual.  The  landscape,  in  particular, 
is  one  of  the  first  which  can  be  localized.  Puvis  had  a 
passionate  love  for  the  Rhone,  "which  takes  on  the 
colour  of  the  silvery  mists  of  the  Lyonnais  sky,  a  light, 
transparent  gauze  which  veils  but  does  not  conceal  the 
beauty  of  the  mystical  and  industrious  city." 
M.  Vachon,  from  whom  we  have  just  quoted,  adds  a 
few  lines  by  the  artist  which  are  full  of  his  love  for  his 
native  country:  "  I  often  think  of  our  great  river  Rhone," 
wrote  the  master  to  a  friend,  "  How  often  have  I  been 
fain  to  take  the  train  and  go  and  steep  myself  in  the 
beauty  of  its  wide  horizons;  but  it  is  a  dream,  like  so 
much  else." 

When  he  went  to  Lyons  Puvis  always  walked  along  the 
banks  of  the  river.  One  day  when  he  took  two  of  his 
pupils  with  him,  as  Arsene  Alexandre  narrates,  "  after 
a  silence  and  long  contemplation  which  seemed  to 
portend  some  epic  vision,  he  said,  '  This  is  the  place 

73 


where,  when  I  was  at  school,  I  loved  to  play  ducks  and 
drakes !  Ah !  I  don't  think  I  could  do  it  so  well  now.  .  .  .  ' 
And  he  stooped  and  picked  up  some  flat  pebbles  and 
sent  them  bravely  skimming  and  hopping  over  the 
water.  People  stopped  to  look  at  the  gentleman,  with  his 
rosette  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  in  his  coat,  playing 
ducks  and  drakes.  The  passers-by  gaped.  A  number  of 
little  boys  ran  up  and  critically  watched  his  performance. 
Chavannes  was  as  happy  as  a  God." 
The  anecdote  is  not  exactly  indispensable  to  the  under- 
standing of  the  Lyons  pictures,  but  a  little  game  of 
ducks  and  drakes  is  permissible — as  Puvis  tells  us — even 
in  the  purlieus  of  the  Sacred  Wood. 


74 


H 
U) 

U) 

s 


I 


PLATE  XXXIX.  LA  SORBONNE. 

*r  •  -^HE  days  when  the  artist  had  to  do  his  work 
at  his  own  risk  were  now  far  behind.  Hardly 
had  he  finished  the  Lyons  series  than  he  was 
commissioned  to  paint  the  vast  frieze  on  the 
back  wall  of  the  great  amphitheatre  of  the  new  Sorbonne 
built  by  M.  Nenot.  And  on  this  occasion  the  artist  was 
very  near  refusing  the  commission. 
The  price  offered  for  this  colossal  undertaking,  thirty-five 
thousand  francs,  was  no  great  inducement.  Further  the 
subject  did  not  much  attract  the  painter,  who  was  very 
uncompromising  in  these  matters,  and  in  other  circum- 
stances had  already  refused  to  accept  a  proposal  which 
did  not  give  him  a  free  hand.  Puvis,  it  is  said,  had 
already  written  a  letter  of  refusal,  which  was  kept  back 
through  the  intervention  of  a  friend.  He  promised  to 
think  it  over  for  three  days,  and  this  had  the  desired 
effect,  for  reflection  enabled  him  to  see  the  good  use  he 
could  make  of  his  subject. 

And  here  are  the  essential  lines  in  his  own  words:  "  In  a 
clearing  in  a  sacred  wood,  sitting  on  a  block  of  marble, 
the  Sorbonne ;  on  each  side  of  her  are  two  geniuses  carry- 
ing palm-branches;  at  her  feet  is  a  bubbling  spring.  On 
her  right,  Literature;  Eloquence  standing  up;  Poetry 
represented  by  the  muses  in  various  attitudes  on  the  turf ; 
History  and  Archaeology  are  rummaging  in  the  past; 
Philosophy  is  discussing  the  mystery  of  Life  and  Death ; 
on  the  left  are  the  Sciences ;  Geology,  Physiology,  Botany, 
Chemistry  symbolized  by  their  attributes ;  Physics  is  half 
opening  her  veils  to  a  host  of  young  men  offering  her  an 
electric  spark  as  the  premisses  of  their  work ;  in  the  shade 
of  a  little  wood  Geometry  is  pondering  a  problem." 

75 


One  of  the  principal  elements  of  the  picture  is  the 
admirable  landscape,  the  majestic  ordering  of  which  we 
are  here  forced  to  show  only  in  fragments.  As  usual  it 
was  built  up  out  of  nothing.  "  I  broke  off  a  little  twig 
from  an  oak,"  wrote  Puvis  in  1888,  "  and  in  my  picture 
it  has  grown  into  a  great  tree."  And,  another  day,  when 
he  was  showing  M.  Durand-Tabier  a  pine-branch  nailed 
to  the  wall  of  his  studio,  the  painter  said:  "  That  is  the 
forest  in  the  Sorbonne."  And  M.  Paul  Baudouin  once 
found  in  the  drawer  in  which  he  kept  various  souvenirs 
of  his  master  and  friend,  a  few  little  shells,  a  few  pieces 
of  crystal,  a  piece  of  coral,  all  of  which  were  translated 
on  to  canvas,  grown  out  of  all  recognition,  and  he 
characterized  this  rare  power  of  ennobling  everything 
in  a  neat  phrase:  "  Chavannes  saw  his  Virgilian  epics 
and  landscapes  in  his  daily  journey  from  the  Place 
Pigalle  to  the  Boulevard  Boileau." 


w 


O 

CQ 

OS 
O 
to 


I 


PLATE  XL.  LA  SORBONNE  (THE  SCIENCES) 
»  •  -^0  grasp  the  artist's  intentions  it  is  necessary 
to  augment  the  note  already  quoted  with  the 
commentary  published  in  the  catalogue  of  the 
Salon  of  1887 — when  the  cartoon  was  ex- 
hibited— and  also  a  long  conversation  reported  by 
M.  Vachon. 

Both  agree  in  showing  the  importance  which  Puvis 
attached  to  the  allegorical  structure  of  his  picture.  This 
is  not  the  place  in  which  to  ask,  as  Burger  and  Castag- 
nary  did,  whether  that  was  their  merit  and  power. 
But  even  those  to  whom  any  allegory,  however  free  it 
may  be  of  scholastic  dryasdust,  does  impede  and  rather 
cool  the  pleasure  of  eyes  and  heart,  will  admit  the  re- 
flective spirit  which  controls  these  intellectual  structures. 
The  group  of  the  Sciences  was  thus  explained  to  M. 
Vachon:  "  .  .  .  .  Could  I  do  better  than  to  depict  Geology 
and  the  Sea  as  two  female  figures  with  their  bodies 
simply  veiled  with  a  transparent  gauze  which  allows  their 
beauty  to  be  admired.  One  of  them,  crowned  with  a  dia- 
dem of  coral,  carries  a  conch-shell  in  her  hand:  the 
other,  decked  with  precious  stones,  is  holding  a  piece  of 
rock-crystal.  Mineralogy,  an  old  woman,  as  old  as  the 
world,  but  solid,  built  of  chalk  and  sand,  is  sitting  on 
the  ground,  leaning  against  a  piece  of  rock  in  which  is 
a  fossil  shell.  Botany  has  a  bunch  of  flowers  in  her  lap. 
A  child,  with  a  scalpel  in  his  hand,  is  trying  to  catch  a 
lizard  to  study  it,  while  another  is  eagerly  examining  a 
microbe  culture  in  a  bottle.  Physics  is  a  sort  of  mysteri- 
ous Isis,  who  unveils  only  to  the  ardent,  enthusiastic, 
convinced,  initiate:  I  have  placed  her  on  a  tall  pedestal, 
like  a  goddess;  a  group  of  young  men  with  one  impulse 

77 


are  vowing  their  allegiance  to  her.  The  mathematical 
sciences  will  be  three  men  absorbed  in  the  study  of  a 
geometrical  problem." 

But  if  we  may  be  tempted  to  deduce  from  these  intellec- 
tual preoccupations  that  Puvis  was  inclined  to  pontifi- 
cate over  his  contemporaries,  we  must  turn  to  a  private 
letter  for  the  eagerly  told  narrative  of  the  solemn 
inauguration  of  the  Sorbonne  in  1889,  upon  the  occasion 
of  which  he  was  honoured  with  the  Commander's  cross. 
41  ...  The  ceremony  over,  as  the  song  says,  I  felt  awk- 
ward enough  for  I  had  heard  from  the  ministry  that 
morning  that  the  President  of  the  Republic  was  going 
to  give  me  a  decoration.  Well,  the  '  Marseillaise  '  came 
to  an  end,  the  crowd  disappeared,  the  President  vanished. 
I  had  to  follow  the  general  example  and  had  just  reached 
the  door  when  M.  Gr6ard,  who  had  been  looking  for  me, 
caught  hold  of  me,  and — quite  by  chance! — we  found 
ourselves  in  the  room  reserved  for  distinguished  persons. 
M.  Fallieres  took  the  casket,  handed  it  to  M.  Carnot, 
who  gave  it  to  me  with  a  few  words  too  kind  to  be 
repeated  here.  M.  Loze  put  the  ribbon  round  my  neck, 
and  there  was  another  commander  added  to  the  list. 
But  there  was  not  a  single  mirror  in  which  I  could  see 
myself:  what  bad  luck!  " 


PLATE  XLI.  INTER  ARTES  ET  NATURAM 
"         A  FTER    a11    these    kindnesses,"    added    Puvis, 
/%      "  I  shall  have  to  reorganize  my  life,  and  that 
/    %    is  not  so  easy." 

JL  JLxhe  feeling  of  the  passage  of  time  had  been 
particularly  painful  to  the  artist  in  the  year  1889  when 
he  had  to  serve  on  the  jury  of  the  Universal  Exhibition. 
Nothing  irritated  him  so  much  as  these  committees 
which  wasted  the  hours  he  had  to  steal  from  his  work. 
"  As  for  my  health,"  he  wrote  at  this  time,  "  I  fancy  the 
best  cure  would  be  a  new  canvas  to  fill  honourably. 
A  man  does  not  with  impunity  change  a  life  of  work 
for  the  forced  inaction  to  which  I  have  been  for  some 
time  condemned." 

The  new  canvas  was  filled  for  the  Salon  of  1890.  It  now 
hangs  on  the  staircase  of  the  Rouen  Museum  and, 
although  we  may  prefer  many  of  the  master's  other 
pictures,  it  is  hard,  in  that  museum,  to  escape  the  desire 
to  leave  the  galleries  with  their  wealth  of  masterpieces 
and  studious  achievements  to  stand  by  this  open  window 
and  breathe  the  pure  air  and  the  poetry  that  come 
through  it. 

We  are  shown  the  admirable  panorama  of  Rouen  seen 
from  the  heights  above  the  Seine  in  the  direction  of  Bon- 
Secours.  But  over  the  ugly  chalky  mounds  of  the  fore- 
ground the  master  has  built  a  terrace — which  has  since 
been  constructed  on  the  identical  spot  by  the  munici- 
pality —  sheltered  with  apple-trees  in  blossom,  and 
furnished  with  noble  ruins,  newly  excavated,  and  re- 
freshed by  a  pool  in  which  water-plants  are  growing. 
"  On  the  right,"  wrote  M.  J.  Peladan  in  1890,  "  is  a 
female  figure  holding  a  piece  of  pottery  and  a  girl  in 

79 


violet  is  giving  her  a  flower  to  copy ;  in  the  background 
are  nude  male  figures  digging;  on  the  left  a  group  of 
artists  and  idealists,  and,  almost  in  the  centre,  a  little 
masterpiece  in  a  great,  is  a  child  dragging  a  swag  of 
leaves.  .  .  . 

"  I  do  not  think  it  possible  to  resist  the  charm  of  this 
fresco  or  to  dispute  its  supremacy  over  all  the  other 
exhibits.  .  .  .  The  attitudes  are  those  of  bas-relief,  blotted 
out  by  a  dominant  light;  the  perfect  harmony  of  means 
and  end  is  so  fine  that  we  are  forced  to  acquiesce  in  an 
enormous  proposition.  M.  de  Chavannes  has  grouped 
together,  nude  male  figures,  men  in  coats,  women  in 
draperies  and  women  in  modern  dress  all  in  the  same 
setting,  and  he  has  been  able  to  do  this  with  the  aid  of 
one  thing  only:  style." 


80 


D 

H 


PLATE  XLII.  LA  NORMANDIE 

*r  m  -^HE  decoration  of  the  staircase  of  the  Rouen 
Museum  contains  two  panels,  "  La  Poterie " 
and  "  La  Ceramique  "  (1891),  in  addition  to  the 
great  fresco  "  Inter  Artes  et  Naturam."  These 
panels  were  as  much  a  tribute  to  the  glory  of  the  old 
Rouen  factories  as  to  the  important  collection  of  pottery 
in  the  Museum. 

In  these  three  pictures  it  was  a  surprise  to  find  Puvis 
boldly  introducing  modern  costume.  Till  then  his 
example  had  been  set  up  as  a  reason  for  banishing  it 
from  decorative  painting,  though  there  was  nothing 
in  Puvis's  work  to  justify  such  drastic  proscription. 
Like  many  artists,  Delacroix  for  instance,  he  had  only 
a  limited  sympathy  with  his  own  generation  and  had 
no  desire  to  glorify  it  in  his  work.  But  his  rather  dis- 
dainful indifference  had  a  more  profound  origin  than 
a  superstitious  respect  for  the  past.  He  was  never 
tempted  to  set  on  canvas  any  scene  just  as  he  had  seen 
it.  He  only  borrowed  from  reality  the  bare  elements 
necessary  to  give  body  to  his  dreams.  There  came  from 
his  hand  hardly  more  portraits  than  "  landscapes " 
proper.  (There  are  hardly  more  than  two  or  three  outside 
those  here  reproduced.)  Once,  about  1880,  he  was  attracted 
by  the  idea  of  painting  a  gathering  of  his  friends  and 
pupils  in  his  studio  at  Neuilly.  But  the  scheme  never  got 
beyond  a  few  charcoal  drawings,  which  are  very  beauti- 
ful in  themselves;  the  picture  was  left  roughly  sketched 
out  and  is  only  intelligible  to  those  who  knew  the 
originals. 

It  was  not  because  he  had  too  closely  studied,  as  had 

been  said  of  him,  the  engravings  in  the  "  Cabinet  des 

G  81 


Estampes,"  that  Puvis  most  often  used  the  nude  and 
drapery.  It  was  his  unchanging  system  to  avoid  all 
particularity,  everything  that  could  draw  attention  from 
the  main  feeling  of  the  picture  and  obscure  the  intelligi- 
bility of  human  action.  A  closer  scrutiny  of  his  work 
will  show  how  gradually  among  the  antique  draperies 
there  appeared  garments  of  a  more  humble  and  more 
plastic  character.  Could  there  be  anything  less  antique 
than  the  vague ' '  peignoir  "of  the ' '  Esperance  "or  the  rags 
of  the  "  Enfant  Prodigue  "  and  the  "  Pauvre  Pecheur?  " 
From  the  time  when  he  discovered  how  to  dress  "  Sainte 
GenevieVe  "  or  "  Fra  AngeHco  "  after  his  own  fashion, 
there  was  nothing  to  prevent  his  simplifying  and  general- 
izing modern  costume  to  make  it  suited  to  his  work. 
That  is  what  happened  quite  early  in  his  career,  shortly 
after  1870,  in  "  Le  Ballon  "  and  "  Le  Pigeon  Voyageur." 
And  he  repeated  it  very  frequently  about  the  time  of  the 
Rouen  pictures,  in  several  unfamiliar  little  canvases 
like  "  La  Normandie,"  reproduced  on  the  opposite  page. 


XLII.  LA  NORMANDIE.   (Normandy.) 


PLATE  XLIII.  LA  GARDEUSE  DE  CHEVRES  (THE 
GOATHERD) 

p  m  ^0  the  same  series  belongs  this  graceful, 
>/  tender  group,  in  which,  slightly  modified, 
we  recognize  two  of  the  figures  of  the  Rouen 
•A-  fresco.  The  young  mother  pulling  down  a 
branch  of  an  apple-tree  for  her  child  has  here  become 
a  goatherd,  a  pure  and  beautiful  figure  in  spite  of  her 
wretched  clothes;  her  back  is  towards  us  and  she  is 
holding  up  the  child's  hand  to  the  fruit. 
It  was  a  rest  for  Puvis  between  two  long  pieces  of  work, 
to  paint  these  little  pictures  in  which  there  seems  to  be 
a  relaxation  of  his  style.  "  Always  <  grand  operas! '  "  he 
said  once.  "  When  will  they  let  me  sing  a  simple  song?  " 
But  he  was  the  last  to  grant  himself  the  luxury  of  such 
laborious  rest,  and  it  needed  all  the  friendly  insistence 
of  M.  Durand  Ruel  to  bring  him  to  it. 
Towards  the  end  of  his  over-busy  days  he  would  banish 
fatigue  with  one  of  those  jests  which  his  pupils  still  love 
to  remember:  "  I've  had  enough  of  women  carrying 
lyres.  When  will  they  let  me  paint  a  scavenger!  " 
It  is  amusing  to  think  what  the  aesthetes  who  were 
overwhelming  the  master  with  their  happy  eulogies 
would  have  made  of  such  disrespectful  remarks.  Would 
his  name  have  been  inscribed  among  the  spiritual 
patrons  of  the  various  "  aesthetic  movements  "  which 
were  destined  to  "  kindle  the  Holy  Grail  of  the  faithful 
beating  of  our  hearts,"  to  realize  the  "  Arcana  of  the 
Visionary;  attraction  being  proportionate  to  destiny," 
to  perfect  "  Subtlety,  the  third  orthodoxy,"  and  to 
realize  the  other  no  less  important  tasks  to  which  we 
were  bidden  at  that  time  by  M.  Josephin  Peladan,  an 
G2  83 


erudite  writer  and  a  subtle  critic,  who  was  also  "  by  the 
divine  pity  and  the  assent  of  his  brothers,  grand  master 
of  the  '  Rose  t  Croix  '  of  the  Temple  and  the  Grail, 
in  Roman  Catholic  Communion  with  Joseph  of  Ari- 
mathaea,  Hugues  de  Paiens  and  Dante  "  ? 
Would  he  have  inspired  verses  like  those  of  which  a 
whole  volume  was  to  be  composed,  the  most  disturbing 
of  which  is  not  perhaps  this  sonnet  by  Mallarme: 

Toute  aurore  meme  gourde 

A  crisper  un  poing  obscur 

Centre  des  clarions  d'azur 

Embouch6s  par  cette  sourde 

A  le  patre  avec  le  gourde 

Jointe  au  baton  frappant  dur 

Le  long  de  son  pas  futur 

Tant  que  la  source  ample  sourde 

Par  avance  ainsi  tu  vis 
O  solitaire  Puvis 
De  Chavannes 

Jamais  seul 

De  conduire  le  temps  boire 

A  la  nymphe  sans  linceul 

Que  lui  d6couvre  ta  gloire. 

"  There  is  never  a  piece  of  lunacy  published  but  it  is  sent 
to  me  as  its  patron  as  of  right,"  said  the  artist  resignedly 
in  1896. 


84 


XLIII.   LA  GARDEUSE  DE  CHEVRES.   (The  Goatherd.) 


PLATE  XLIV.  LE  MODELE  (PASTEL) 
"  "W"  AM  writing  to  you  from  Neuilly  where  I  am  waiting 
for  a  model  who,  apparently,  is  not  coming,  and 
I  am  torn  between  the  desire  to  be  free  for  the 
-A-  day  and  regret  at  having  to  waste  it. 
"  Ever  since  I  have  been  painting,  and  that  is  a  long 
time,  I  always  suffer  such  painful  moments  in  the  face  of 
Nature  and  then  I  cannot  tear  myself  away." 
This  feeling  of  apprehension,  this  passing  uneasiness 
on  first  facing  his  model,  which  the  artist  confesses  in  a 
letter  written  in  1895,  must  be  remembered  because  it 
brings  us  to  one  of  the  most  delicate  points  in  considering 
Puvis  and  his  work.  If  he  was  afraid  of  direct  study  from 
nature,  it  was  not — need  it  be  repeated? — because  he 
could  not  copy  what  he  saw  as  well  as  any  other  artist. 
But  he  had  not  the  support  of  the  conviction — the  motive 
force  of  the  realists — that  it  is  enough  to  copy  and  that 
Nature  is  always  beautiful  in  any  circumstances.  Like 
his  great  predecessor,  Delacroix,  who  records  the  same 
feeling  in  twenty  passages  in  his  Diary,  he  was  afraid 
of  being  led  away  from  his  object  by  the  pursuit  of  the 
thousand  useless  accidents  presented  by  reality.  "  The 
model "  wrote  Delacroix,  "  draws  everything  into  itself, 
and  there  is  nothing  left  of  the  painter." 
Now  from  beginning  to  end  of  Puvis's  work,  to  which 
forty  years  of  unceasing  toil  were  devoted,  through  all 
the  changes  in  subject  and  handling,  beneath  the  some- 
times complicated  scaffolding  of  the  allegories,  always 
there  is  materialized  beneath  eternally  fresh  forms  a 
vision  of  a  world  in  which  everything  should  be  noble, 
calm,  radiant  in  the  most  serene  atmosphere,  pure  as  the 
most  limpid  water,  comforting  as  the  softest  light.  And 

85 


it  is  comprehensible  that  he  should  approach  his  models 
fearfully  when  the  first  contact  with  them  seems  brutal 
to  eyes  less  prepared  than  his,  and,  in  his  case,  he  was 
not  concerned  only  with  seeing  what  reality  could  give 
him  but  also  with  finding  fresh  nourishment  for  his 
eternal  obsession. 

What  places  Puvis  high  above  the  mystics,  symbolists 
and  Pre-Raphaelites  with  whom  he  has  so  often  been 
confused,  is  that  he  has  never  stepped  back  or  been 
biassed  in  this  struggle  with  Nature.  His  solution  is  a 
painter's  solution.  He  did  not  make  any  arbitrary 
assumption  in  reducing  outline  and  modelling  to  their 
simplest  expression,  or  orchestrating  his  bright  colours 
in  broad  vivid  masses.  That  and  the  air  and  light  which 
bathe  the  body  and  shade  off  the  accessory  details  have 
progressively  given  up  the  secret  of  it  to  the  seeing  eye. 


86 


XLIV.   LE  MODELE  :    PASTEL.   (The  Model.) 


PLATE  XLV.  L'ETE  (SUMMER) 

PUVIS  DE  CHAVANNES  was  now  at  the  head 
of  a  group  of  artists  who  serve  to  mark  a  transi- 
tional stage  between  the  "  officials  "  who  are 
housed  in  the  Champs  Elysees,  and  the  painters 
of  the  "  vanguard  "  who  were  soon  to  found  the  Salon 
of  the  Independents  and  the  Autumn  Salon.  The  "  Societe 
Nationale  des  Beaux  Arts,"  which  held  its  sittings  in  the 
Champ  de  Mars  between  the  two  Universal  Exhibitions 
of  1889  and  1900,  unanimously  elected  him  President 
on  the  death  of  Meissonier  in  1891.  Soon  in  1895  all 
the  artists  and  writers  of  Paris  were  to  unite  in  a  great 
banquet  to  celebrate  the  master's  seventieth  birthday. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  he  undertook  a  new  decorative 
series  for  the  "  Hotel  de  Ville  "  of  Paris. 
For  the  first  gallery  of  the  reception  rooms  Puvis  painted 
two  large  pictures,  "  L'Ete  "  (exhibited  in  1891)  and 
"  L'Hiver  "  (exhibited  in  1892);  then  on  four  jambs 
he  painted  figures  connected  with  the  two  main  frescoes  ; 
a  reaper,  a  binder,  a  wood-cutter  and  a  scarecrow. 
"  Here,"  said  Edouard  Rod  of  «  L'Ete,"  "  is  the  master  of 
the  older  generation  who  has  had  the  most  considerable 
influence  on  the  present  generation.  .  .  .  The  poet  in 
him  has  never  found  a  more  complete  or  more  absolute 
expression  of  his  idea  than  in  this  great  panel.  .  .  .  His 
creative  hand  has  suffused  the  whole  picture  with  a 
burning  light  which  is  implacable  in  its  unity,  and  under 
it  is  a  stretch  of  blue  water  with  purple  shadows,  a  pond 
and  meadows  of  a  tender  green  broken  by  the  darker 
green  of  the  clumps  of  trees,  all  shut  in  by  a  distant 
line  of  undulating  hills.  In  the  different  planes  of  the 
vast  landscape  are  groups  of  figures  representing  the 

87 


divers  labours  of  the  season;  women  bathing  in  the 
foreground;  further  off  a  fisherman  casting  his  nets; 
then  a  mother,  under  a  bush,  suckling  her  child,  then 
hay-makers  piling  the  hay  on  a  great  cart.  It  is  permis- 
sible to  prefer  some  other  picture  by  this  master,  as,  for 
instance,  the  '  Bois  SacreV  to  this  sunny,  almost  over- 
whelmingly majestic  scene,  as  we  may  prefer  the  fresh 
coolness  of  shadow  to  the  dazzling  heat  of  the  sun;  but 
it  is  impossible  to  imagine  a  more  robust,  more  united, 
more  communicative  picture,  and  it  is  more:  it  is  an 
harmonious  poem." 


88 


H 

•W 


PLATE  XLVI.  L'HIVER  (WINTER) 

MANY    ingenious    explanations    have    been 
put  forward  for  the  artist's  choice  of  subject 
for   his   decoration   of   a   municipal   room. 
But  we  may  legitimately  believe  that  his 
reason  merely  was  that  it  gave  him  pleasure,   after 
having  so  often  expressed  the  softness  of  spring  and 
autumn  to  attempt  new  poems  of  the  extreme  seasons. 
These  pictures  would  have  been  in  place  anywhere. 
"  L'Ete  "  and  "  L'Hiver  "  were  received,  in  the  Salons 
of  1892  and  1893,  with  the  admiration  due  to  a  master 
who  had  lost  none  of  his  power.  But  precisely  because 
he  was  not  the  man  to  confine  himself  to  a  formula  he 
found  once  more  that  he  had  astonished  the  critics  and 
gone  too  far  for  a  portion  of  his  public. 
In  the  Salons  of  1893  and  1894  appeared  the  pictures 
which  were  to  complete  the  decoration  of  the  Hotel  de 
Ville  and  occupy  the  space  above  the  great  staircase 
left  vacant  by  the  death  of  Baudry  and  Delaunay.  There 
are  a  dozen  tympans,  jambs  and  arches,  all  chased  with 
truly  municipal   mouldings,   the   disposition   of  which 
is  so  complicated  as  to  defy  all  intelligible  description. 
Puvis    used  them  to   personify  the  virtues   of   Paris: 
Patriotism,     Charity,     Artistic    Ardour,     Study,     Wit, 
Fantasy,    Beauty,    Intrepidity,    Worship    of    the    Past, 
Industry,  Urbanity  and  Poetry.  Above    all    is  a  great 
ceiling-painting:    "  Victor    Hugo  offrant  sa  Lyre  a  la 
Ville  de  Paris." 

Puvis  had  a  horror  of  the  ceilings,  and  the  broken  surfaces 
which  were  given  to  him  in  addition  did  not  add  to  his 
pleasure  in  the  work.  At  the  outset  he  wrote:  "  I  am  still 
struggling  with  my  staircase — devil  take  it!  It  will  be 

89 


slow  going  until  the  day  when  I  am  broken  in  to  this 
kind  of  work  and  can  speak  without  stammering." 
The  necessity  of  getting  the  better  of  such  blatant  sur- 
roundings no  doubt  hastened  the  evolution  which  had 
already  begun  to  appear  in  his  work,  and  was  now  aided 
by  the  parallel  evolution  of  French  painting.  If,  for 
instance,  we  compare  the  great  fresco  of  the  Sorbonne 
with  the  almost  monochrome  tapestry  of  the  "  Ave 
Picardia  "  or  the  "  Ludus  "  at  Amiens,  and  see  the 
luminous  masses  of  paint  singing  the  most  penetrating 
and  richly  ordered  colour  symphonies,  we  shall  find  that 
grey  plays  a  less  and  less  necessary  part  in  the  artist's 
scheme.  That  lovely  veil  of  mist  is  suddenly  rent  asunder 
in  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  where  purples,  yellows,  and 
especially  blues,  the  stained-glass  blue  that  Puvis  seemed 
to  be  preparing  and  holding  in  reserve  for  thirty  years, 
are  brought  into  the  purest  light.  It  would  be  unfair 
to  the  picture  and  would  seem  to  confirm  the  critics 
were  we  to  suffer  its  translation  by  photography  and 
printer's  ink.  The  allegory  is  not  particularly  interesting, 
but  these  pictures  must  be  seen  in  their  places  to  gain 
any  complete  idea  of  the  colourist's  and  decorator's 
skill. 


90 


PLATE  XLVII.  LES  MUSES  INSPIRATRICES    (THE 
INSPIRING  MUSES) 

IN  1891  the  Council  of  the  Trustees  of  the  Public 
Library   in    Boston   asked   Puvis   to   decorate   the 
entrance  hall  of  the  building.  The  artist  hesitated 
for  a  long  time  about  undertaking  a  considerable 
piece  of  work  for  a  building  he  had  never  seen  and 
probably  never  would  see. 

"  The  offer  does  not  tempt  me,"  he  wrote,  "  and  I  want 
rest,  I  mean  rest  made  delightful  with  many  pictures  in 
which  I  can  give  rein  to  my  fancy.  "The  amiable  tenacity 
of  the  Americans  overcame  his  hesitation:  "  The  Boston 
architect,"  he  wrote,  the  following  year,  "  has  sent  me 
an  ambassador  with  these  instructions:  absolute  sub- 
mission to  my  wishes,  perfect  liberty  for  myself — and 
all  my  most  unassailable  objections  have  been  responded 
to  with  such  a  masterful  desire  to  overcome  them 
that  a  blunt  refusal  seemed  absolutely  brutal. 
"  What  can  one  tell  a  man  who  says  he  will  wait  ten 
years  or  more  if  necessary,  or  as  long  as  I  please ! ...  It 
was  no  good  my  pointing  to  my  white  beard.  On  Wednes- 
day morning  I  am  to  see  a  reduced  plaster  model  of  the 
building — made  expressly  for  me.  I  shall  have  to  think 
it  over." 

The  work  was  begun  in  1894:  "  Boston  is  progressing 
slowly  in  the  dense  heat  of  Neuilly,"  wrote  the  artist. 
"  September  will  probably  see  it  finished;  thus  the  result 
of  three  years  of  my  life  will  vanish  over  the  ocean. 
Never  again  shall  I  undertake  such  a  task.  I  am  like  a 
father  whose  daughter  has  gone  into  a  convent." 
The  central  picture:  "  Les  Muses  Inspiratrices  acclamant 
le  Genie  Messager  de  Lumiere,"  half  of  which  is  here 

91 


reproduced,  was  exhibited  in  the  Champ  de  Mars  in  1895. 
Eight  other  panels,  the  first  five  of  which  were  exhibited 
in  1896,  personified  "  Astronomy  "  (Chaldean  shepherds 
interrogating  the  stars),  "  Bucolic  Poetry  "  (Virgil 
sitting  by  a  row  of  bee-hives  near  a  blue  lake),  "  Epic 
Poetry "  (Homer  with  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey), 
"  History  "  (Melpomene  examining  some  ruins), 
"  Chemistry  "  (the  earth  revealing  its  mysteries),  "  Phy- 
sics "  (good  and  bad  news  gliding  over  telegraph  wires). 
But  the  artist's  ingenious  handling  of  his  subject  is  the 
least  merit  of  this  series  which  he  conceived  as  a  brilliant 
symphony,  in  harmony  with  its  rich  setting  of  coloured 
marbles  of  which  he  always  had  samples  by  his  side  as 
he  worked.  It  was  apparently  a  revelation,  even  for 
those  who  knew  his  other  decorations  in  Paris,  to  see 
these  pictures  in  place  at  Boston.  As  he  foresaw,  the 
artist  never  had  that  joy  himself.  One  of  his  pupils, 
M.  Victor  Koos,  was  commissioned  to  see  his  master's 
work  installed. 


92 


W 


PLATE  XLVIII.    LA   VEILLEE  DE  SAINTE  GENE- 
VIEVE  (THE  VIGIL  OF  SAINT  GENEVIEVE) 

IN    1896,   Meissonier  having   died   without   having 
carried   out   his   share   in   the   decoration   of   the 
Pantheon,    the   administration    offered    Puvis   the 
vacant  place.  He  joyfully  accepted  the  opportunity 
of  continuing  the  story  of  the  saint  which  he  had  begun 
twenty  years  before  at  the  other  end  of  the  building. 
"  I  shall  tackle  the  Pantheon,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend, 
"  when  I  have  finished  with  the  Hotel  de  Ville.  It  shall 
be  my  last  will  and  testament." 

Like  the  first  series,  this  occupies  four  intercolumnia- 
tions.  In  the  first  three,  as  a  triptych,  a  procession, 
coming  from  the  gates  of  the  town,  is  moving  towards 
the  fleet  of  the  "  Ravitaillement  "  (re- victualling).  "  In 
her  ardent  faith  and  charity,  Genevieve,  whom  not  the 
greatest  dangers  have  been  able  to  turn  from  her  task 
brings  food  to  Paris,  besieged  and  threatened  with 
famine."  The  fourth  panel,  which  like  a  serene  night 
comes  as  a  close  to  a  piece  of  work  full  of  gentleness 
and  satisfying  quality,  needs  no  other  commentary  than 
its  beautiful  legend:  "  Genevieve,  sustained  by  her  pious 
solicitude,  watches  over  the  sleeping  city  of  Paris." 
This  series  which  has  been  reproduced  thousands  of 
times  in  engravings  and  photographs,  took  all  Puvis's 
indomitable  energy  in  its  successful  execution.  He  had 
to  leave  the  frieze  with  which  he  intended  to  complete 
it  as  acharcoal  drawing.  He  had  to  be  assisted  by  one  of 
his  pupils,  M.  Victor  Koos,  in  the  painting  of  the  pictures 
themselves.  For  some  years  past,  Puvis,  who  in  his 
maturity  had  hated  to  see  any  other  man  touch  his 
pictures  or  even  stretch  his  canvas,  had  allowed  his 

93 


collaborators  to  play  a  more  and  more  important  part 
in  his  work.  All  of  them  declare  proudly  that  they  were 
only  instruments  as  ductile  as  possible  in  the  hands 
of  the  master  and  protest  that  their  chief  merit  lies  in 
their  having  spared  him  physical  pain  and  trouble. 
After  the  death  of  Mme  Puvis  de  Chavannes  the  artist 
was  only  attached  to  life  by  the  work  in  which  she  who 
was  gone  yet  lived:  "  I  have  resumed  my  work,"  he 
wrote  on  September  10,  "  and  I  am  dreaming  of  the 
day  when  I  shall  have  finished  my  Pantheon  series. 
It  seems  to  me  that  then  I  shall  have  nothing  to  do  but 
to  lay  me  down  and  sleep. 

"  I  am  haunted  by  that  feeling.  There  could  be  nothing 
more  natural  or  more  logical.  I  have  worked  hard  and 
have  the  right  to  rest  without  fixing  any  definite  period 
for  it." 

Every  day  the  struggle  against  a  growing  state  of  weari- 
ness grew  more  painful.  He  was  under  no  illusion  about 
it.  "  Happily,"  he  wrote  on  September  22,  "  my  work  is 
very  little  affected.  It  is  all  in  good  order.  I  shall  leave 
nothing  straggling  behind  me;  that  sustains  and  com- 
forts me." 

With  his  last  reserve  of  strength  exhausted  Puvis  de 
Chavannes  only  left  his  studio  at  Neuilly  to  take  to  his 
bed.  When  he  died,  at  the  age  of  seventy-four,  on  October 
24,  1898,  he  left  no  "  stragglers,"  and  his  "  last  will  and 
testament  "  was  finished,  as  he  had  wished. 

FINIS 


94 


XLVIII.  LA  VEILLE'E  DE  SAINTE  GENEVIEVE. 

(The  Vigil  of  Saint  Genevieve.) 


Letchworth :  At  the  Arden  Press 


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